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.
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.
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...
A lot is being written these days about the renewal of cities. Surely, considerable new construction is visible in many places. Surely, the number of tourists, commuters and daily visitors is up, along with the national economy. And surely, the...
The 1999 Ahwahnee Awards will be presented November 17-19, 1999, at the National Smart Growth Conference in San Diego, California. The award recognizes projects’ overall quality, community participation, and use of the Ahwahnee Principles, a...
The Town of Huntersville, North Carolina recently chose Bowman Development Group, the developer of nearby Vermillion, to redevelop a 32-acre former mill site situated along the planned rapid transit corridor linking the town to Charlotte. A...