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.
In Michigan, an edge city is trying to become more like a real city.
If ever a place could be classified as a landmark of suburbia, it would be the Northland Mall in Southfield, Michigan. Built in 1954, it was the first enclosed suburban...
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...
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,...
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...
Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company has designed the Life magazine Dream House for 2000. The Lifespan House, as the dwelling is called, is under construction in I’On, a traditional neighborhood development in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Designed...
The Environmental Journalism Center has published Covering Urban Sprawl: Rethinking the American Dream, a primer for journalists on the social, economic, and
environmental impacts of sprawl, by David Goldberg of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution....