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.
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...
Post Properties and Federal Realty Trust, two real estate investment trusts that have invested heavily in The New Urbanism, have announced a strategic alliance. The companies will jointly develop mixed-use urban projects with “main street retail”...
Leading new urbanists are working together to create a new school of architecture that focuses on traditional architecture and design. The Institute of Traditional Architecture will be based on a formal apprenticeship system similar to the one used...
An analysis by the Texas Transportation Institute shows that road widening has had virtually no impact on the growth of traffic congestion in major urban areas in the last 15 years. The analysis by the Surface Transportation Policy Project (STPP), a...
Northwest Landing, a traditional neighborhood development (TND) in Dupont, Washington, owned by Weyerhaeuser Real Estate Company, closed sales of nearly 200 new homes in 1998, making it the best-selling new-home neighborhood in Pierce County by a...
Many home builders believe that attached garages are necessary from a marketing standpoint, but actual buyer choices at two new traditional neighborhood developments (TNDs) where detached garages are optional call that assumption into question....
A recent survey shows an unexpected population boom in downtowns across the country. The Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy and the Fannie Mae Foundation surveyed 24 major U.S. cities and found that all predict an increase...
Dean Brennan and Al Zelinka, two community planners who are writing a book on design for safety and crime reduction, report that the New Urbanism “clearly plays an important role in eliminating fear of crime and the perception of crime.”
The...
Professional Builder magazine published a recent article highlighting the high sales of several new urbanist projects, citing the appeal of a functioning community and the role of publicity in sales rates. The charrette has proved a key to...
Communities of the Twenty-first Century likely will take the form of compact, pedestrian-oriented villages wired with high-tech communications, according to a recent Los Angeles Times article. Writer David Bloom makes the link between the New...
A 270-acre development proposal in Lake Park, Florida, may be the first new urbanist extension of a neighborhood designed by the Olmstead Brothers, great town planners of the early Twentieth Century. The plan, designed by the Treasure Coast Regional...
A new partnership has been established between TND Advisors LLC, an affiliate of the Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND) Fund, and Hillman Properties Inc., a subsidiary of The Hillman Company, of Pittsburgh, to provide equity capital for TNDs...