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 “Vision Book” series is used to focus potential buyers on homes in Habersham, a traditional neighborhood development (TND) in Beaufort County, South Carolina. The beautifully illustrated custom book series by Design Traditions in Atlanta explains...
CNU has been asked by HUD to organize and conduct a training seminar for recipients of Hope VI funding (the program aimed at rebuilding public housing and reconnecting it with surrounding communities). The session will be held in conjunction with...
Tennessee has approved a law requiring metropolitan regions to adopt urban growth boundaries (UGBs) by July, 2001. Unlike Oregon’s UGBs, which strongly restrict growth outside of the boundary, Tennessee’s law allows medium to low density growth...
In an important and long overdue report by a major environmental group on the costs of sprawl, the Sierra Club released “The Dark side of the American Dream: The Costs and Consequences of Suburban Sprawl” on September 9, 1998.
“Sprawl is more than...
New urbanist towns and neighborhoods are almost always compromised in some way when they are built. Can flawed projects still foster community and pedestrian activity to a much greater degree than conventional suburbia?
Jeff Townsend, a...
The biggest redevelopment to date of a suburban shopping center into a mixed-use neighborhood may break ground in the spring of 1999 in San Jose, California. Federal Realty Investment Trust, based in Bethesda, Maryland, plans 1,200 residential units...
An Environmental Forum at the fall Board meeting of the Congress for the New Urbanism brought representatives of leading environmental groups together with CNU officials. The participants examined common interests and points of contention between...
CNU recently received funding from the Surdna Foundation to support efforts to mobilize a constituency of critical mass for new urbanist approaches to urban revitalization. Two key projects have been funded: the Implementation Task Force will look...
Vice President Al Gore has joined the ranks of many politicians, including both Republicans and Democrats, who are starting to recognize the benefits of traditional community design. In a speech to the Brookings Institution on September 2, Gore...
What does it take to get a traditional neighborhood development (TND) approved? The answer may be different in every municipality, but in Chesterton, Indiana, a favorable legal framework, educated municipal planners, and a determined developer all...
As of late 1998, only about 20,000 people live in new urbanist communities. The movement is still very young, yet strong anecdotal evidence suggests that the New Urbanism encourages social interaction to a far greater degree than conventional...
In Portland, Oregon, the Westside Max light rail line opened in September, 1998, and looks like a big success. Just two weeks after the 18-mile, $800 million line opened, light rail ridership in Portland was 22 percent above projections. Part of the...