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.
CNU has initiated a multi-year study of dead and dying malls. The first phase of this study is being undertaken by a studio course at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Kennedy School of Government. The class is studying malls in Los Angeles...
In Civano, a TND in Tucson, Arizona, the American Communities Fund, a division of Fannie Mae, took over 100 percent ownership on January 4. The fund already owned 84 percent of the project and exercised an option to buy the remaining 16 percent from...
The City of Boynton Beach in Palm Beach County, Florida, is reviewing site plans for Quantum Park and Village, a $100 million mixed-use development. Derek Vander Ploeg & Associates, Inc. of Boca Raton, who worked on Mizner Park, has designed a...
I’On in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, was recently given the 1999 Stewardship Award with Full Recognition by the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources. The award recognizes projects for successfully protecting natural resources through...
By Randall Arendt American Planning Association, Planning Advisory Service Report No. 487/488, 1999. Softcover, 144 pp., $34.00; PAS Subscribers, $17.00. ISBN 1-884829-33-3 Heritage neighborhoods like Arden, Delaware, Wyomissing,...
Washington Town Center has overcome bureaucratic entanglements and developer opposition to benefit from a hot real estate market and become the object of high expectations. Like many suburban communities, Washington Township, New Jer-sey, has...
New study sends message to developers and public officials: there is a market demand for new compact development in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Builders and developers in the Philadelphia metropolitan area have taken notice of the potential for...
The Building Homes in America’s Cities Initiative is a major new effort led by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to build more than one million new homes in the nation’s cities over the next 10 years. The program’s focus is to...
Attorney Doris Goldstein has developed a set of model legal documents for TND development. Goldstein says she offers the service as a cost-effective alternative for small developers who want to avoid the high price of drafting new documents and the...
For years, CNU members in various parts of the country have urged us to work more on the local level. We have generally demurred out of concern that we would end up spending all our time on local issues and neglect the big picture. Our new Regional...
Development financing for a new neighborhood near Duke University in Durham, North Carolina has been secured by TND Capital Management LLC, a part of the TND Fund, an equity investment group for new urbanist developments. Trinity Heights is a 6.8-...
Playa Vista, the 1,087-acre mixed-use, high-density project in Los Angeles finally began construction of buildings in the winter of 2000 after more than a decade of planning, design, infrastructure development, legal battles, and a change of...