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.
Grandview, a six square-mile unincorporated area just east of Durango, CO, will become a new urban community if it is not stopped by citizen opposition to development. Jeff Speck of Duany Plater-Zyberk and Co. was hired by the Tierra Group, LLC, the...
A total of $494 million was awarded in what may be the second-to-last round of HOPE VI funding. New urbanists participated in the design of more than half of the 28 projects announced in March, 2003, allocated in the 2002 budget.
The program is...
Building envelope standards, general guiding principles:
1. Buildings are aligned and close to the street.
2. The street is a coherent space, with consistent building forms on both sides of the street.
3. Buildings oversee the street (and square...
The 2002-03 Knight Fellows are: Lolly Barnes, Chester “Rick” Chellman, Carol Coletta, Alicia Diaz, Ken Driggers, Robert Freeman, Jai Jennifer, Howard Katz, Kevin Klinkenberg, Pam Kramer, Michelle Robinson, Stuart Sirota, & Marie L. York.
After completing about 13 years of development, Kentlands is about to embark on its first redevelopment. One of the first traditional neighborhood developments (TNDs), Kentlands also includes a conventional suburban shopping district, originally...
The City of Alexandria, Virginia, in March approved a high-density neighborhood centered on a transit station plaza. Described as a “city within a city,” Eisenhower East actually wraps around a new urban community under construction called Carlyle...
CNU continues to develop a structure for regional chapters. A handbook for organizing a chapter will be available at CNU XI. Regional chapters will be able to tap into the energy of local members by forming their own nonprofit organizations that...
The New Urbanism differs in several ways from the traditional settlement models from which it springs. No other single factor is as important in forcing variations from traditional practice as the necessity to deal with cars in quantity; and no...
Research shows mixed-use main streets often outperform conventional properties in their local markets. The strength of new urban town centers goes well beyond competitive retail sales — it also includes unexpectedly high demand for live/work...
Randal O’Toole and others in the Preserving the American Dream conference
treated “smart growth” and “New Urbanism” as if both terms have the same meaning. Most practitioners, however, make a distinction between the two. At the risk of...
The Rev. Eric O. Jacobsen thinks interest in New Urbanism among committed Christians, and especially among Christian intellectuals, is about to take off. Since completing a draft of Sidewalks in the Kingdom early last year, “there have been two...
CNU welcomes Suzahna Poliwka, a transportation engineer studying planning at the University of California, Berkeley. She will work for three months on alternative street standards.