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.
Northwest Landing, a traditional neighborhood development near Tacoma, Washington, is outdistancing its competitors by a long margin. From January to September, 101 homes were sold in the project, compared to 58 in Russellwood, the next best selling...
Residents of Kentlands, the Gaithersburg, Maryland, TND, took control of their destiny with regards to Midtown, the town center. The developer, Guy Beatty, wanted to build a 180,000 square foot Target superstore — claiming that a smaller, pedestrian...
CNU’s Task Forces have taken an active role this year planning our annual Congress. CNU VII: The Wealth of Cities will be held in Milwaukee, June 3-6, 1999. The Task Force Chairs are meeting in San Francisco this month to help cull through the many...
Federal money finally came through to begin construction of Del Paso Nuevo, a 150-acre new urbanist neighborhood in Sacramento, California. Designed by Jeff Townsend of Vail Engineering, Del Paso Nuevo was one of the first Homeownership Zones...
The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) responded quickly to two recent attacks on sprawl, one by Vice President Al Gore and the other by the Sierra Club (both are reported in this issue of New Urban News). Perceiving that its industry is...
The Pritzker Prize, “the Nobel of architecture,” is generally a glorification of modern architectural achievements. This year, at a White House presentation of the prize, the nation’s architectural elite was treated to an overview of what went wrong...
The I’On Builders Guild was created by the developers of I’On, a traditional neighborhood development (TND) in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. The guild is a screening and educational system for builders and home designers in the 243-acre project....
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...