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 unique partnership was formed between Orlando developer Lake Nona Property Holdings, a public school district and a local YMCA. Lake Nona Property Holdings recently broke ground on a 1,000-acre neotraditional development called Northlake Park. Due...
CHK Architects and Planners, located in Silver Spring, MD, has changed its name to Torti Gallas and Partners/CHK. Principals John Torti, AIA, and Thomas Gallas, CPA, have guided the firm since 1993 in its transition to new urbanist planning and...
Movie theaters increasingly are part of new urbanist commercial centers. The first to be built was a two screen theater in downtown Celebration, near Orlando, in 1996. In 1997, a multiplex cinema opened in Redmond Town Center in Redmond, Washington...
Mixed-use, pedestrian-oriented town centers offered by the New Urbanism could be attractive to Fortune 500 companies, according to Robert Tiscareno of LMN Architects, which designed Redmond Town Center in Redmond, Washington. The project originally...
Companies affiliated with the Mormon Church are planning a traditional neighborhood development in Kansas City, Missouri, to fulfill the city’s land use plan advocating mixed-use, high density development patterned after new urbanist plans in other...
n The Wharton Real Estate Review recently featured essays by new urbanists Andres Duany, Robert Davis, Laurie Volk, Todd Zimmerman, and Witold Rybczynski. Copies of Volume 11, Number 2, Fall 1998 can be obtained directly from the Samuel Zell and...
New grants fund projects by new urbanist designers.
A recent round of $507 million in grants confirms that the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is committed to revitalizing public housing using
new urbanist principles....
Setting up a legal framework for a mixed use town center may require the developer to look at malls for inspiration.
Town center is by far the most complex part of a traditional neighborhood development (TND), where the mixed uses converge in a...
New Urbanist philosopher Leon Krier’s new book, Choice or Fate, critiques the architectural excesses of Modernism and presents a workable countervision in the form of graphical plans for the restoration of several European city centers, a design for...
Milwaukee is proving the principles of the New Urbanism in a tough real estate market — a rust belt city. The lessons can apply to other cities, towns, and even suburbs.
Housing construction in Milwaukee increased by about 80 percent in 1998,...
Sprawl control and “smart growth” emerged as mainstream issues in the November elections, when initiatives limiting state funding for sprawl and implementing urban growth boundaries were approved by voters. In preelection barnstorming speeches for...
The new urbanist redevelopment plan for St. Louis Park Town Center was recently submitted for approval to the Metropolitan Council of St. Louis Park, Minnesota, and is expected to be adopted by the end of January. The project’s three and four-storey...