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.
City and suburban streets usually are categorized according to an automotive hierarchy of local collector and arterial streets. St. Paul, Minnesota, where the downtown is built on a grid of streets, is developing a pedestrian hierarchy. All streets...
“The most attractive” Toys R Us store in the country is located on a downtown intersection of Santa Mon-ica, California, with an impressive corner entrance and street-fronts fully lined with windows, according to a recent publication of The National...
Financing of New Urbanism amounts to a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of billions of dollars that annually pour into conventional real estate projects, according to Robert Chapman’s report on page 1 of this issue. Judging by the dollars...
• Program was approved in October, 1992.
• Fifty-nine implementation grants have been approved to date in 53 cities, disproportionately in older cities in the eastern U.S.
• Total cost of program to HUD is $2.5 billion, including demolition...
The new National Town Builders Association (NTBA) now has an advisory board including Robert Chapman, Joel Embry, Joe Alfandre, John Clark, Chris Leinberger, Vince Graham, Mike Watkins and Andres Duany. Six of the advisors are actively involved in...
An early neotraditional town designed by Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, Amelia Park, finally received financing in November, and is scheduled to begin construction in January, 1998.
In the October, 1997, issue of Governing magazine, Alan Ehrenhalt covers the “Asphalt Rebellion,” which he describes as a “full-fledged protest movement” against “a half century of American engineering ideology.” A specific target of this rebellion...
A year after the first book of home plans for neotraditional developments was published, TND Series, Traditional Neighborhood Design Volume 2 is scheduled for a February 1, 1998, publishing date. The new volume will have 132 plans, and more than 100...
After a prolonged drought, lasting from 1989 through 1994, a tidal wave of new money is now crashing into the real estate capital markets. This is happening for four reasons. The sustained economic recovery has allowed the reinvestment of profits....
Early results are encouraging in HUD’s program to build more human-scale, pedestrian-oriented public housing.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which built high-rise, superblock style projects in the 1940s through 1960s...
After much controversy, the Town of Port Royal, South Carolina, approved a Traditional Town Code based on a master plan by Dover, Kohl & Partners of South Miami, Florida. The mandatory code applies to a 245-acre, largely historic central part of...
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) met in October to promote walkable neighborhoods and encourage multimodal transportation investments. CNU was represented, along with the Local Government Commission, Surface Transportation Policy Project, EPA,...