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.
Costa Pacific Communities has begun construction of the village center of Villebois, a new urban community in Wilsonville, Oregon, the firm announced. The center includes 650 residential units and buildings with first-floor retail.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has begun awarding grants of up to $400,000 to communities that try to reverse the epidemic of childhood obesity by increasing opportunities for physical activity and by improving access to healthy, affordable...
The Seaside Institute selected author James Howard Kunstler as the recipient of the 2009 Seaside Prize. The honor is awarded to an individual or organization that has made significant contributions to the quality and character of our communities....
The Ohio Department of Transportation announced in December that agreements have been reached on a federally funded $50 million series of road, tunnel, and intersection improvements for Cleveland’s West Shoreway, a six-lane limited-access highway,...
New Haven, Connecticut, has taken another step toward turning a short expressway near downtown into a pedestrian-friendly boulevard lined by mixed-use buildings. Nine firms have submitted bids for the task of helping the city devise a plan for...
Andres Duany came up with a creative stimulus proposal that ties into the need to retrofit suburbia. A growing number of malls across the US are “going dark,” yet are in prime locations to build new urban centers. Such sites represent the most...
Large American cities increasingly are trying to improve the aesthetics, environmental performance, or sociability of their alleys. In 2007 the City of Chicago issued “The Chicago Green Alley Handbook,” which is aimed at installing permeable paving...
Mashpee Commons on Cape Cod “is weathering the storm very well,” Douglas Storrs says of the impact of the national economic downturn on one of nation’s longest-established new urban mixed-use centers. “It is interesting to note how well our...
Foreclosures are lowest in historic, gentrifying, and new urban neighborhoods, according to a preliminary findings of an analysis of the Louisville, Kentucky, region.
While distance from downtown correlates with higher foreclosure rates, this didn’...
Edited by John Morris DixonVisual Reference Publications, 2008, 304 pp., $60 hardcover
The Gulfport, Mississippi, City Council in early November accepted the largest gift in the history of the US Department of Veterans Affairs, according to the Biloxi SunHerald. The 92-acre Veterans Affairs property was given to the city. “The new...
Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2009, a survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Urban Land Institute, grimly predicts: “The credit crisis and ensuing recession promise to drag commercial real estate markets into a difficult period marked by value...