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 Inner City and Transportation Task Forces have been asked by the Northeast-Midwest Institute, a Washington DC-based nonprofit, to copublish a book on implementing urban infill and transit-oriented development. Funding comes, in part, from the U....
Edward Bohrer Jr., the four-term mayor of Gaithersburg, Maryland, died on August 27 at the age of 58. A public servant of vision and integrity, he was an important role model in the early days of the New Urbanism.
Together with developer Joe...
We’d like to thank Architecture magazine for explaining The Truman Show,
Peter Weir’s blockbuster 1998 movie. We saw it, and thought it was about a megalomaniac television producer who keeps the fictional show’s star, Truman Burbank (played by Jim...
An adaptive reuse of an automotive shop is spurring a larger redevelopment of a depressed Detroit neighborhood. The 1921 shop is being converted into 28 market-rate, for-sale residential lofts, according to J.C. Cataldo of Canfield Lofts LLC, the...
A long-awaited train station recently opened at The Crossings, the transit-oriented village designed by Calthorpe Associates in Mountain View, California. The promise of a station helped to sell homes at the 16-acre mixed-use project, which is 80...
The link is getting stronger between new mass transit lines and pedestrian-oriented development. Transit-oriented new urbanist projects recently designed and/or under construction include Orenco Station, Peterkort Station and Portland International...
CNU’s Board of Directors is reaching out to leaders of environmental organizations. At their Board meeting in October, they’ll be meeting with representatives of national and regional environmental advocacy groups. The aim is to initiate a two-way...
The Wealth of Cities, Revitalizing the Centers of American Life By John O. Norquist Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, 1998. Hardcover, 227 pp., $25.00 U.S.; $34.95 Canada. Milwaukee Mayor John O. Norquist has produced a treatise for...
Public officials increasingly are soliciting the construction of traditional neighborhood developments (TNDs). Orlando, Florida, set the standard for encouraging a TND: the city’s efforts generated proposals by leading new urbanists to redevelop a...
Inner City Task Force members are working with HUD to put together another program to train public housing officials in new urbanist design. It will be modeled after the successful Harvard seminar led by CNU in 1996.
CNU’s Charter Book is up and running, once again. Michael Leccese and Kathleen McCormick of Fountainhead Communications have recently been hired as editors of this forthcoming book elaborating on the Charter of the New Urbanism. We hope to have the...
The Charter of the New Urbanism states that “civic, institutional and commercial activity should be embedded in neighborhoods and districts, not isolated in remote, single-use complexes. Schools should be sized and located to enable children to walk...