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.
The former site of a state mental hospital near downtown Northamp-ton, Massachusetts, will become a new urbanist project called The Village at Hospital Hill. The master plan by Calthorpe Associates envisions a commercial district on the project’s...
Albuquerque, New Mexico, has a new plan to revitalize its languishing downtown, where office and retail vacancy rates both top 15 percent. As reported in The Wall Street Journal, the Alvarado project is unusual because it is financed primarily by a...
Groundbreaking is underway at San Elijo Ranch, a 640-acre new urbanist project in San Diego, California. The developer will start with a substantial town center, including 224,000 square feet of retail and 767 residential units. The town center will...
NUN: What, in your opinion, are the most important trends in retail at the moment, and which of those have a particular impact on new urbanist retail?
Gibbs: The hottest trend in retailing now is to build what the chains call lifestyle shopping...
Until very recently, retail has been a mostly unrealized dream of the New Urbanism. The promise of integrating residential and commercial uses is an essential ingredient in the recipe for traditional neighborhood development (TND), but few new...
The Town Council of Huntington, New York, approved smart growth principles on October 5, 1999, that support the development of walkable, mixed-use, neighborhoods. A nonprofit citizens group, Vision Huntington, spearheaded an effective campaign to...
Comprehensive Design Solutions (CDS) in Hilton Head, South Carolina, now offers TND developers help in creating better homes and streetscapes. The firm’s developer kits include two categories of portfolios: One features 10 floor plans and three...
Homes in I’On, a TND in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, have proved popular. Housing values in this TND have skyrocketed due, in part, to a red-hot real estate market. A colonial-style single home that sold originally for $164,000 in February, 1998...
Southside, a new urbanist redevelopment of a Victorian neighborhood in Greensboro, North Carolina, is now cleared to break ground in early spring of 2000. Designed by Tom Low of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. and developed by Nate Bowman, Southside...
LUME 4, NUMBERS 1–6 (January/February – November/December, 1999)
Feature articles Issue, page
CITIES/INFILL
Pumping life into a city with urban design Jan/Feb 1, 3-6
Downtowns gaining population nationwide Jan/Feb 6
True urbanists May/Jun 1, 6...
Live/work units, an updated version of the old live-above-the-shop storefront, now are built or under construction in a handful of new urbanist projects. Units are built or under construction at Vermillion in Huntersville, North Carolina, Kentlands...
Market Square in Gaithersburg, Maryland, is probably the most significant new urbanist retail development to open in 1999. Market Square is a new downtown shared by Kentlands and Lakelands, adjacent traditional neighborhood developments (TNDs)...