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.
Playa Vista in West Los Angeles recently lost its most prominent tenant when DreamWorks SKG scrapped their plans for a studio. The facility represented only 4 percent of the entire development, and the loss won’t affect the rest of the building...
The physical components of the New Urbanism — the houses, streets, and neighborhoods — are designed to foster social cohesion and civic engagement, but an attractive public realm alone does not make a vibrant community. A relatively new type of...
Whether you measure the New Urbanism (NU) by the diversity of its enemies, or by the power of its friends, it has come a long way in 1999, the year suburban sprawl was elevated to a national issue. Environmental groups, the vice president, the...
Peter Katz, author of The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community, was interviewed on ABC World News Tonight on July 21. The subject was how the design of conventional suburbs offer teenagers little in the way of activities and richness of...
The August 16 issue of Time magazine features the article “Saving Suburbia” on traditional neigborhood developement. The Wall Street Journal covered the report Valuing the New Urbanism in its August 4 edition.
Five hundred copies of Andres Duany’s Lexicon are now available in a preliminary edition, 99 percent complete. The complete edition will be published in 2000. Contact DPZ at: (305) 644-1023.
A year-long fight over the design of a big box development in downtown Decatur, Georgia, has provided the impetus for the new, mandatory design guidelines for the historic business district. All new commercial developments must meet the guidelines...
The neighborhood store in Haile Village Center, a TND in Gainesville, Florida, was recently moved across the street and down a block, according to developer Robert Kramer. A new manager was hired, and sales immediately rose 40 percent in the Village...
A former suburban mall near Chattanooga, Tennessee, has increased its retail occupancy dramatically as a result of a plan to convert it to a 70-acre mixed-use town center. Eastgate Town Center had a 27 percent occupancy rate in 1997 that has risen...
Ground has been broken for the first phase of Cascade Station, a mixed-use urban center adjacent to Portland International Airport. Designed by LMN Architects of Seattle in collaboration with Calthorpe Associates, Cascade Station incorporates two...
In Denver, ground has been broken for a dense, urban addition to the city’s downtown. The Commons neighborhood will grow on 51 acres of vacant rail yards, and its street grid will connect with Denver’s bustling LoDo neighborhood and the 16th Street...
As the New Urbanism rides a crest of public attention, more developers are incorporating ideas from the movement into suburban-style projects.
Arecent article on New Urbanism in Time magazine mentioned Centennial, a “New England-type TND” north...