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.
New Urban News asked some leading new urbanists to write open letters to President-elect Barack Obama in an effort to identify a new national agenda for urbanism. In many cases, the letters were shortened significantly for print publication, but the...
Since street network connectivity affects all new urbanist projects (and too many good projects are held back by a lack of traditional urban street grids beyond their borders), both individual urbanists and the overall movement will benefit from CNU...
New York City created an esplanade this summer on one of Manhattan’s busiest streets — Broadway from 35th to 42nd Street — by eliminating two lanes of vehicular traffic. Benches and chairs were installed on block-long stretches of the newly carved-...
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...
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...
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...
New Longview, a new urban development in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, about 20 miles from downtown Kansas City, was featured on ABC’s nightly news Sept. 25 in a report about how one developer — Gale Communities — continues to build and sell houses...