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.
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...
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...
Redmond Town Center, designed by LMN Architects, received the International Council of Shopping Centers’ 10th Annual Award for Superior Achievement in Design and Imaging (SADI) for 1999. The Redmond, Washington, project applies neotraditional design...
Pulte Homes Corporation, the nation’s largest home builder, is encountering entitlement problems with its first new urbanist project, Salamanca, a 160-acre traditional neighborhood development (TND) planned for West Kendall, Florida.
A master plan guides the dramatic revitalization of a once shabby, moribund downtown.
West Palm Beach, Florida, has staged a amazing turnaround in six years since the city hired new urbanists to create a downtown plan. At the start of the decade...
Envision Utah, a public/private grassroots coalition, recently conducted a survey with Utah residents to determine their preferences for future growth and development in the state. A significant majority of the 17,000 respondents chose the two...
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...