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.
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...
A 60-acre high-tech “eco-industrial park” is planned adjacent to the village center in San Christobol Village, a 1,818-acre TND in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The project is being developed in a new community growth district by the State Land Office and...
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...
Editor’s note: more coverage of CNU VII appears on page 20 of this issue.
The seventh annual Congress for the New Urbanism, the largest ever, concentrated exclusively on city issues. “There are no suburban projects being shown at CNU VII and that...
CNU is now taking orders for the first edition of Charter, a book of 27 essays and commentary which expand on the principles outlined in the Charter of the New Urbanism, the guiding document of this revolution in the way cities are designed, built,...
A bestselling book by architect Sarah Susanka turns new urbanist concepts inside out by addressing an area often overlooked by the community design movement — the inside of the house. Her argument in The Not So Big House for a better use of space...
A recent article in the Charlotte Observer reported on the trend toward “billboard buildings,” new commercial buildings that serve as a visual trademark for national retail chains in order to be instantly recognized by consumers. “It’s a marketing...