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 National Trust for Historic Preservation has released the report “Challenging Sprawl: Organizational Responses to a National Problem.” The report gathers viewpoints on sprawl and alternative development patterns from representatives of national...
David Rusk’s new book, Inside Game, Outside Game: Winning Strategies for Saving Urban America, provides a critique of the efforts of the federal government and community development corporations to revitalize urban neighborhoods. A former mayor of...
“Exploring (New) Urbanism,” the conference held at the Harvard Design School in March 1999, is now available on CD-ROM. The disc contains complete, unedited video footage of the proceedings, including speeches by Peter Calthorpe, Andres Duany, and...
If California wants to continue to attract new businesses and remain a good place to work and live, the state must support smart growth with public funds, concludes California State Treasurer Philip Angelides in a recently released special edition...
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...
Traditional neighborhood developments under construction in the US rose by 28 percent in 1999.
Traditional neighborhood development (TND) in the U.S. continued its steady growth in 1999. However, on a percentage basis, the increase was not as...
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.