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.
Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream was published by North Point Press on March 1. This new urbanist manifesto by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck assesses sprawl’s economic, ecological,...
A new urbanist community is far more complex, and therefore more risky to finance, than a conventional subdivision. But with this complexity comes the possibility of creating a much greater long-term value. That’s the conclusion drawn by Tom Low, an...
The New Jersey state plan calls for compact, mixed-use development, but the bureaucracy supports sprawl. Washington Town Center has forced officials to confront this inconsistency.
When Washington Township created its town center plan, it applied...
Even as recent estimates indicate a rise in the amount of money going to TNDs, the conservative financial market still hedges its bets on the New Urbanism.
More than 125 traditional neighborhood developments (TNDs) are under construction, as are...
Under a new ordinance, TND is a development option anywhere within the City of Knoxville, Tennessee. City planners developed the ordinance during the building of Mechanicsville Commons, a Hope VI redevelopment of a public housing project. It applies...
The National Town Builders Association (NTBA) has announced the first item in its planned Town Building Marketplace. Full members of NTBA can now enjoy rebates on the purchase of Windsor Windows, the first line of windows to be made entirely of...
Homestyles.com (formerly Homestyles Pub-
lishing), the people behind the TND Series of neotraditional home plans, has launched TNDhomes.com, an electronic gateway to home plans and traditional neighborhood development. The web site includes most of...
The Round, a transit-oriented development in Beaverton, Oregon, remains in development limbo (see July/August 1999 issue). Developer BCB Group has not been able to secure financing, and the City of Beaverton now has taken legal measures to force BCB...
Abacoa has sold 525 homes since it opened in the summer of 1997. “Our home sales have picked up, because all of our amenities are falling into place,” says Nader Salour, president of Abacoa Development Company. In a large- scale TND like Abacoa, all...
A 300,000 square foot retail and entertainment center is now under construction as part of Peabody Place, an eight-block revitalization project in downtown Memphis, Tennessee. Master planned by Baltimore-based design firm RTKL for developer Belz...
Joe Storch is selling his corner store in Southern Village, a traditional neighborhood development (TND) in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The 2,000 square foot store, with seating for 75, has already been through several proprietors since it opened...
To ease financing, developers of TNDs need to reduce the risk premium for the lenders who make the initial loans for land acquisition, development, and construction (ADC).