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 Town of Seaside, Florida, received tremendous visibility through The Truman Show, a Paramount movie directed by Peter Weir and starring Jim Carrey. Filmed in 1997 on location at Seaside, the movie opened to great reviews at the end of May, 1998...
More than 800 designers, planners, developers, activists, environmentalists and politicians participated in CNU VI in Denver. This represented a 180 percent increase in attendance from CNU V in Toronto. Approximately one-third of the attendees were...
The costs of the New Urbanism still are a subject of intense debate, as indicated by an analysis by the Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition (REBIC), based in Charlotte, North Carolina. REBIC has an ax to grind — the group objects to zoning...
At more than 19 square miles, the Mesa del Sol property in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is the largest undeveloped parcel of urban land under single ownership near a central business district in North America, according to the New Mexico Land Office,...
The vigor of the New Urbanism is reflected in the myriad subdisciplines within the movement. Three members of the Congress for the New Urbanism — Michael Garber, John Anderson and Thomas DiGiovanni — have created a well researched and superbly...
The Congress for the New Urbanism and the Local Government Commission jointly received a $250,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in June for a two-year demonstration project in five older suburban cities near Los Angeles....
Harriet Tregoning, director of urban and economic development at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, reports that 94 to 95 percent of development in the U.S. is on “greenfield,”or undeveloped, sites. Even with a tenfold increase in infill (a...
PrimRose Beach, a planned 75-acre traditional neighborhood development (TND) in Corolla, North Carolina, is similar in its beach location, radial grid pattern of streets and scale of blocks and lots to Seaside, Florida, the first modern-day TND....
At the ULI/CNU meeting, opening statements were made by CNU Boardchairman and Seaside developer Robert Davis on the state of development patterns in the the U.S. Here are excerpts:
For five millennia, we have built towns and cities with strong...
Total infrastructure and development costs per unit and per capita are slightly lower for New Urbanism compared to conventional suburban development (CSD), according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. The theoretical study was completed...
At the end of 1996, the fast-growing City of Genoa, Illinois, adopted a comprehensive plan calling for pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use hamlets and neighborhoods in most undeveloped areas. The first major development proposed under the new plan...
Recent articles in two major dailies, the Seattle Times (April 4 and 11) and the Chicago Tribune (June 20), show that the mainstream press is becoming more sophisticated about the New Urbanism. Both articles were prompted by new urbanist...