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.
Middleton Hills recently planted its central wetlands park, which will be a major amenity for the 149-acre TND in Madison, Wisconsin. Most of the park will be marshes and ponds ringed by walking trails and grass. Active recreation includes a soccer...
The Town Group plans to break ground this fall on Liberty, a 3,000-acre traditional neighborhood development (TND) in Riverside County, California. Designed by Cooper Robertson, the project is a series of seven villages on the edge of a lake, each...
The City of Aspen, Colorado, recently approved a $1 million revitalization of three downtown blocks in response to a citizen- initiated plan to revamp parking and encourage pedestrian use of downtown. Design Workshop, a landscape architecture and...
As the debate over suburban sprawl heats up nationwide, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Surface Transportation Policy Project have released a timely book. Once There Were Greenfields: How Urban Sprawl is Undermining America’s...
This year’s Congress was our largest gathering yet, with over 1,000 participants. The breakout sessions and discussions remained tightly aligned with this year’s theme — exploring cities’ inherent strengths and strategies for revitalizing urban...
A new bimonthly publication for new traditional neighborhoods, The Town Paper, seeks to make potential homebuyers more comfortable with the traditional neighborhood development (TND) concept by offering them residents’ perspectives on TNDs. Through...
Market Square in Kentlands, Gaithersburg, Maryland, is emerging as the latest sizable town center in a new urbanist project. As of June, 1999, a total of 183,000 square feet of retail space had been leased in Market Square, including restaurants, an...
Construction could begin as early as this fall on 4,000- acre Southwood, the first of several planned traditional neighborhood developments by the St. Joe Company, Florida’s largest private landowner. Designed by Dick Galehouse of Sasaki Associates...
Federal Realty Investment Trust and Post Properties will begin construction this summer on Pentagon Row, the first in a series of cooperative mixed-use projects planned by the companies since the announcement of their strategic alliance last fall....
The owner of Legacy Business Park, one of the Dallas area’s largest employers, is building the first new urbanist town center within an existing office park. Legacy Town Center, under construction in Plano, Texas, will have primary roads and...
In the most frequently chosen scenario, the average size of the single family lot would decrease from 0.32 acre to 0.29 acre in 2020. Homes would be positioned closer together, with a wider variety of housing available, including townhouses, condos...
Disney’s new town is three years old; many debate its significance to society, the real estate industry, and the New Urbanism.
Three years ago, the first residents
moved into the Town of Celebration in Osceola County, Florida. Now 2...