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.
Duany Plater Zyberk & Company, Miami, 1999. Plastic cover, 74 pp. (11" x 17"), $99. The Lexicon can only be ordered direct: 305-644-1021. Most active new urbanists have seen bits and pieces of The Lexicon of the New Urbanism. Anyone who has...
Transit oriented development (TOD) is becoming a crucial part of the effort to control Atlanta’s sprawl and smog problems. The effort got a boost in January when Bell South announced that it would join the fight against traffic congestion and sprawl...
CNU's long-awaited book, Charter of the New Urbanism, will be available in time for Christmas. This book is a collection of essays and commentary by 35 leading new urbanist thinkers. Each writer starts with a sentence from CNU's 1994 Charter and...
The New Urbanism has yet to make a strong foothold in Southern California, but the developers of Liberty, a planned TND in Riverside County, have been heartened by “the tremendous builder response” to the 2,900 acre, 7000-unit project, according to...
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...
Nothing can be built unless it is financed, and that is why it is urgent that lenders become educated about the New Urbanism. A Wharton School study (preliminary findings were reported in the last issue of New Urban News) identified significant...
Garage building is no longer a free-for-all in Portland, Oregon. The City Council unanimously passed an ordinance consisting of five new regulations that limit the amount of garage area allowed on the front and side of single family houses, row...
The General Services Administration, the primary building space provider for federal agencies, seeks to support smart growth.
GSA’s Center for Urban Development and Livability held its first national meeting in Washington, DC, in September....
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...