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.
Editor’s note: The following is based in part on the article “Financing New Urbanism “ by Christopher B. Leinberger and Robert Davis, published in 1999 in MIT’s architectural journal Thresholds.
Alvarado stands out from other redevelopment...
New urbanist project will take housing production to a new level.
The Stapleton Airport redevelopment in Denver is the largest urban infill project in the US, according to developer Forest City. Certainly, the plans call for one of the most...
Flush with the success of his first new urbanist project, Vermillion, developer Nate Bowman is now moving forward with two transit-oriented developments (TODs). Bowman was selected as the developer of Anchor Mill, a 32-acre site, in a public/private...
Information and materials on appropriate projects are being sought for a book about town centers and main streets. Author Chuck Bohl of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will focus on the urban design and development challenges of...
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...
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...
The first ever proposal for a new urbanist development in the Syracuse, New York, region is now in permit review in the Town of Camillus. The Pioneer Companies of Syracuse proposes a first phase of 84 small-lot single family homes on 30 of the site...
Twenty-five years of regional planning has left Portland with a renewed downtown, a spirited and informed public debate, and lots of sprawl that still needs fixing.
Portland has a long-standing reputation as a model for regional-scale progressive...
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...