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 John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is going to phase out its support of the Knight Program in Community Building over the next three years. Since its founding in late 2000, the program, based at the University of Miami School of Architecture...
Communities on Cape Cod have begun encouraging housing above stores as a way of revitalizing their town centers. Frederick Melo reported Feb. 8 in the Cape Cod Times that the Town of Bourne has issued three permits for housing above retail...
A long-planned TND called Avonlea is now going through site plan review in Stuart, Florida, according to news reports. A small part of the 49-acre infill project has gone up already, but the main part of Avonlea — 275,000 square feet of commercial...
Downtown Orlando is making a comeback. Nearly 2,000 people have moved into the central business district in recent years, and 3,000 more are expected in the next three years, the Orlando Sentinel reports. Downtown population is projected to top out...
Installation of roads and other infrastructure will begin this summer at Liberty Harbor North, an 80-acre, $2 billion redevelopment in Jersey City, New Jersey, designed by Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co., that will contain 6,000 housing units. “DPZ...
Westminster, Colorado, a rapidly growing suburban municipality halfway between Boulder and Denver, will soon have a wealth of new urban developments. Bradburn, a traditional neighborhood development (TND) focused more on residential than commercial...
Preserved (if you can call it that) in Communist amber for the past 45 years, the capital of Cuba remains a striking example of architecture and urbanism almost untouched by the “creative destruction” of the capitalist global economy.
An active minority holds up a mass-market supermarket from anchoring the town center of a traditional neighborhood development (TND).
Middleton Hills in Middleton, Wisconsin, illustrates how difficult it can be to bring mass-market retail to a...
Cities need to reduce the obstacles to land assembly and acquisition in urban neighborhoods, according to a March forum of the Urban Land Institute. High land costs, limited supply, difficult site assembly requirements, long chains of title, and the...
CNU and the Institute of Transportation Engineers have concluded a competitive selection process for a consulting team to lead the technical work involved in producing a new design manual for major urban thoroughfares. The prime contractor is Kimley...
The Bixby Company announced that ground has broken on the Hercules Waterfront, a 21-acre mixed-use town center that will form the heart of a new urban town in Hercules, California. The initial phase will include 14 live/work houses, each three...
Madison, Wisconsin, has adopted an ordinance that requires developers of projects of 10 or more housing units to set aside 15 percent of the units for people who earn less than the Dane County median income. In exchange for providing the affordable...