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.
Until Benjamin C. Thompson applied his imaginative touch, urban markets in the US mainly were somewhat grubby, underappreciated places that sold fish, meat, produce, and other necessities of life. The St. Paul-born, Yale-educated Thompson, who died...
Are New Urbanism and environmentalism potentially strong allies? One place to look for an answer is Denver’s Stapleton Airport redevelopment. Not only does the 4,700-acre project offer a combination of housing, employment, shopping, and neighborhood...
New urbanists have always been interested in street design. Since the New Urbanism was founded, its practitioners have experimented with street patterns, widths, and adjacent buildings. However, most of these efforts have resulted in one-time...
People who buy homes within a quarter-mile of a bus line or within a half-mile of a train station can now qualify with Fannie Mae for a mortgage eight percent larger in a growing number of cities. The company began offering larger mortgages three...
The Association for the New Urbanism in Pennsylvania (ANUPA), which Lancaster County planner Will Selman and Emmaus Borough Council member Joyce Marin began organizing in the summer of 2001, has established a web site: www.anupa.org. One of the site...
(Introduction to Terminated Vistas, Deflected Vistas, and Layered Vistas)
I. Urban Vistas
In the practice of urbanism, a host of techniques can help people move around easily and interestingly. One group of techniques consists of methods that...
Contrary to what preservation-minded visitors may think, the charming historic section of Charleston, South Carolina, makes up a mere six of the city’s 100 square miles. Outlying areas of Charleston have a far more suburban character, and some are...
A street grid adds a human-scale element, enhances transit access, and creates the potential for urban-style redevelopment in two recent Colorado power centers.
Two Denver area shopping centers show how large-scale retail, when subjected to...
Peter Calthorpe’s “urban network” inspired architect Kevin Klinkenberg of Kansas City, Missouri, to offer an alternative system — clearly indebted to Calthorpe’s proposal, but with assumptions drawn from current retail methods, open space planning...
Researchers in North Carolina have found that in greenfield development, New Urbanism is far better than conventional development at protecting watersheds, mitigating the impact of runoff, and restoring degraded streams.
“New Urbanism offers a...
September 28, CNU's Board of Directors decided to organize regional and student CNU chapters. The chapters will start slow, in order to work out the kinks in management, fundraising, and administration. Nascent chapters in Florida and Pennsylvania...
Laurence Qamar, formerly a principal and lead designer with Lennertz Coyle & Associates, has started his own architecture and town planning consulting practice in Portland, Oregon.