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.
Governing Magazine’s 1998 Public Officials of the Year awards include two mayors who are dedicated proponents of the New Urbanism, John O. Norquist of Milwaukee and Nancy M. Graham of West Palm Beach.
Norquist, a Congress for the New Urbanism...
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...
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,...
Dramatic crime reduction has occurred in two public housing projects designed with new urbanist principles.
Two broad approaches can make safe places. The fortress strategy is exemplified by gated communities. New urbanists take the opposite...
The November and December issues of Architecture Magazine contain a lively, two-part debate on the merits of the New Urbanism (NU) by Harvard professor Alex Krieger and noted new urbanist planner Andres Duany. Krieger, a frequent NU critic,...
Essayist Bettina Drew explores the American cultural landscape in Crossing the Expendable Landscape, described as a contemporary urban travelogue dealing with the consequences of built environments that fail to reflect regional, historic, and social...
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...