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.
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,...
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...
The downtown of Celebration a neotraditional town in Osceola County, Florida, is still going through some growing pains. Although many of the businesses — particularly restaurants — have been successful, about a half dozen have failed, the...
CNU will collaborate with local and federal agencies on the redevelopment of Washington, D.C.’s, underused southern shore.
Between the Southeast Freeway and the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C., five short blocks from the U.S. Capitol, is a...
The City of Clearwater near Tampa, Florida, has selected a team of new urbanist developers to head the redevelopment of the city’s downtown. George de Guardiola and Bruce A. Rendina, developers of Abacoa Town Center in Jupiter, Florida, have joined...
Editor’s note: Vince Graham and Robert Turner were interviewed separately. The following are quotes from those interviews on the subject of building human-scale communities.
On the New Urbanism/TND
Vince Graham: “We believe in TND, and we’re...
With their variety of housing types, TNDs potentiallyare able to respond to changes in demographics and market demand better than conventional subdivisions. With that advantage in mind, savvy developers like to keep their plans as flexible as...
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...