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 Texas A&M University System is negotiating to place a new campus for 25,000 students in the middle of a 2,000-acre traditional neighborhood development (TND) that’s been planned for the South Side of San Antonio.
Graph title: Sharing factor
What is the difference between New Urbanism and traditional, “old” urbanism? The answer has to do with one big systemic thing — the rise of suburbia — and with one ubiquitous technical thing — the response to suburbia’...
By the end of March, Georgetown Land Development Company expects to complete demolition at an old wire mill complex in Redding, Connecticut, making way for a transit-oriented development on the approximately 55-acre site. Company president Stephen...
Traditional Neighborhood Development Partners’ plan for an urban-style village adjoining Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, was featured in a Page One article in the Feb. 7 New York Times. The college is contributing 130 acres across from the main...
CNU’s Urban Laboratory sessions were a successful introduction of the Providence Congress. Giving participants an opportunity to work side-by-side with expert new urbanists on local challenges such as customizing a form-based code to the local...
Steve Maun of Leyland Alliance LLC and Andres Duany of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company led a week-long charrette in early February that produced a design for 30 acres of waterfront land in Newburgh, New York, a distressed Hudson River city of 28,...
n Albemarle Sound in North Carolina, a 1,600-acre development called Sandy Point, part of which will feature a “new urban waterfront,” is expected to break ground in the next few months. Eagerly awaited by county and state officials, the 930-acre...
To meet a pressing need for inexpensive classroom space, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools system in North Carolina is going to experiment with a schoolhouse prototype based on Katrina Cottages. A group at Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, led by...
Morningside Village in Charlotte is the redevelopment of a 32-acre apartment complex — not a 32-unit complex as reported in January on page 17. The transit-oriented site near downtown is being developed by Firmitas, a subsidiary of the I’On Group.
A seven-day charrette aimed at planning a new downtown district for Sunland Park, New Mexico, has been tentatively scheduled for the week of March 5th by Moule & Polyzoides Architects and Urbanists, which won a contract from the 14,250-person...
Dan Burden, after helping hundreds of communities make their streets and public spaces comfortable for pedestrians, has been trying recently to help the editors of Prevention magazine understand what makes a place genuinely good for walking. Each...
With a February 13 vote by City Council, Gulfport became the first Mississippi city on the Gulf of Mexico to adopt the SmartCode. The Council approved it 6-0 as a parallel code over the entire city of 71,000. In a separate action, the Council voted...