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.
Donald Watson, Alan Plattus, and Robert G. Shibley, Editors Judging by its title, you might think Time-Saver Standards for Urban Design would be a source mainly for street widths, sidewalk dimensions, parking ratios, and other matters than can...
The redevelopment of Far Eastside in Detroit, currently under construction, is a case study of new urban infill techniques on a large scale. There’s a pent-up demand for housing in the city of Detroit, which has resulted in significant interest on...
In a theater block that Moule & Polyzoides Architects designed in downtown Albuquerque (see Dec. 2002 New Urban News), some of the storefront retail extends only 30 feet deep, rather than the 60 feet that Goody, Clancy believed necessary in an...
The Atlanta Regional Commission, which disburses federal transportation dollars for its region, has a $350 million program to encourage mixed-use, pedestrian-oriented planning and development. The Livable Centers Initiative (LCI) is the largest...
Widespread opposition to sprawl caused developers John and Leslye Wuerfel to cancel plans for building a 4,000-seat minor-league baseball park on 45 acres of farmland in Elmwood Township, near Traverse City, Michigan. “I think if you’re going to...
Document of core principles may expand to cover New Urbanism’s relationship to the environment and the Transect
The Charter of the New Urbanism is CNU’s proudest single achievement. Ratified at CNU IV in Charleston in 1996, the charter exposes...
Chicago architect Philip Bess is the new director of the graduate program in architecture at the University of Notre Dame. He hopes to introduce the craft of classical architecture and the form and politics of traditional urbanism into the school’s...
Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. proposed in early February that the state’s Office of Smart Growth be abolished. Its sprawl-fighting functions would be carried on by the Department of Planning. Chuck Gates in the Department of Planning said five...
New urbanist developer Robert Chapman is preparing to break ground on Winmore, 129-acre traditional neighborhood development (TND) near the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. A neighbor sued to stop the project, claiming it would damage...
A municipally sponsored development in downtown Princeton, New Jersey, is converting two borough-owned parking lots into a $27 million mixed-use project that includes a new outdoor plaza next to Princeton’s new public library.
Edited by John Morris Dixon; designed by Harish K. Patel Visual Reference Publications, Urban Land Institute, 2004, 328 pp., $59.99. The introduction and preface to Urban Spaces cover many of the talking points that are familiar to new...
Mark Schimmenti, design director of the Nashville Civic
Design Center, says design professionals and grassroots activists began thinking in the 1990s that Nashville needed a design center because “they had noticed that cities that seemed to be...