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.
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...
During and immediately after the election President-elect Obama and his campaign made statements relating to smart growth, urbanism, and transit. Read Kaid Benfield’s blog and the t4America blog for details. In Google Blogs, search “Kaid Benfield...
CNU calls on new urbanists to review and comment — by January 5 — on the latest draft of the rating system. As the nation’s first rating system assessing green neighborhood development approaches completion, the Congress for the New Urbanism (...
New urbanist architecture and planning firm Goody Clancy began work in September on a master plan and zoning ordinance for the City of New Orleans. The plan will incorporate recommendations from the three citywide planning initiatives conducted in...
Hopes rise for location-efficient mortgages, which in limited tests have bucked the nationwide wave of bad housing debt by producing no known foreclosures.
Downtown Silver Spring, an arts, entertainment, office, and shopping complex in the formerly deteriorated heart of Silver Spring, Maryland, won this year’s Smart Growth Achievement Award for “overall excellence” from the US Environmental Protection...
Charter Awards 2009 honor the urbanism the world needs now
Where conventional sprawl generates enormous amounts of carbon emissions, erodes the bonds of community, and strains the connection between cities and the rural areas that help sustain...
The City of Stockton, California, has agreed to reduce sprawl and allow construction of 18,000 new housing units within the current city limits in an effort to address global warming, according to the Local Government Commission based in Sacramento...