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...
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...
Liveable Communities: An Evaluation Guide was recently released by The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) to help senior citizens understand how public transportation, driving, walking, housing, shopping, and civic features contribute to...
Forest City, a national real estate development firm, has been selected as the codeveloper, with the Stapleton Development Corp., of the former Stapleton Airport in Denver, Colorado. Forest City agreed to pay the city $83.8 million for 2,935 acres...
The 1999 Seaside Prize was awarded to Robert A. M. Stern, dean of Yale University School of Architecture and one of the architects of Disney’s Celebration. The prize, to
be presented May 15, is annually awarded by the Seaside Institute in Seaside...
Highland Garden Village, a 27-acre TND in Denver, Colorado, has commitments from buyers for almost half the lots scheduled for phase one construction this spring without any significant marketing efforts or built models, according to developer Perry...
1Projects feature new urbanist design and are located on urban sites or previously developed suburban sites; 2Designed means the project is on hold, but has a chance of being built; groundbreaking means infrastructure construction; advanced planning...
Research demonstrates that new urbanists are focusing substantial attention on “infill” planning and development.
Most media coverage of the New Urbanism focuses on new towns like Seaside, Celebration, Kentlands, Harbor Town, and Northwest...
A recent editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune described Ted Mondale’s appointment by Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura to head the Metropolitan Council as “an inspired choice.” As a state senator, Mondale authored several pieces of legislation...