Archives
Welcome to the archives of Better Cities & Towns, a publication founded by Robert Steuteville as New Urban News in 1996. This archive holds two decades of the best news and analysis on compact, mixed-use growth and development, from 1996 to 2015.
About 200 townhomes have been built in Winchester Greens, a project for low to moderate income residents south of Richmond, Virginia, being developed by the Richmond Better Housing Coalition (RBHC). Winchester Greens is like a little bit of downtown...
Vince Graham and Robert Turner share a formula for success.
Down in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, two young developers are mastering the art and technique of building neighborhoods and towns. Vince Graham and Robert Turner have known each other...
By Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck
From Sprawl to Smart Growth:Successful Legal, Planning, and Environmental Systems, is a new book by lawyer Robert Freilich, the editor of The Urban Lawyer. The book describes how smart growth tools have been used around the country, explains...
A firsthand look at the development and building of a sustainable community can be found in the new book Designing Sustainable Communities: Learning from Village Homes by Judy and Michael Corbett. The book focuses on the authors’ innovative 1970s...
On the northeastern edge of Columbus, Ohio’s fastest growing metropolitan area, the new town of Easton is taking shape. While this 1,200-acre planned, mixed-use community is dominated by office buildings, parking lots, and a conventional strip mall...
Frijoles Village, a traditional neighborhood development in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is now called Aldea. More importantly, an equity investor, FCA/Holly Mortgage of Houston, has been found for the project.
Modular housing designs by Frank Lloyd Wright which have not been built in 80 years are getting a renaissance in Washington Square, a housing development which broke ground in February in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The design of Wright’s American...
Architect Daniel Parolek of Envision Design in Berkeley, California, has designed the winning entry in the New Growth Area category of the international competition Housing the Next Ten Million.
After a search of a year and a half,Iowa City has selected a development team for the Peninsula neighborhood. The purchase price for the 70-acre site, of which only about 40 acres is developable, is approximately $1.3 million. The neighborhood,...
North Carolina town is seeking a master developer for a 125-acre transit-oriented project.
It’s difficult to imagine a more complete vision of smart growth in the suburbs than the combination town center and transit- oriented development (TOD)...
Changing Direction, a study by the Surface Transportation Policy Project (STTP), presents both good and bad news about the direction of federal transportation spending in the 1990s. On the positive side, the study says funding increased for repair...