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.
In the mid-1990s, Miami Beach had a problem. The city wanted to expand the tight parking supply of the tourist-filled South Beach Art Deco Historic District, but not erect a structure that people would consider ugly or dull.
The answer, designed...
A vote in the US House of Representatives offers a glimmer of hope for future high-speed rail travel in the US. On May 8, the House Subcommittee on Railroads approved legislation that would provide $59 billion for rail infrastructure projects. The...
Phil Langdon, one of the first writers to cover New Urbanism for a national
publication, has joined the team of New Urban News as associate editor. Langdon wrote a cover article for the Atlantic Monthly in 1988 which brought widespread attention...
Commissioners in Chester County, Pennsylvania, have allocated $18 million for planning and revitalizing the county’s urban centers, consisting of the City of Coatesville and 12 boroughs. Planning grants of $75,000 are available, followed by $500,000...
Calthorpe Associates of Berkeley, California, has concluded two years of regional visioning in Minneapolis/St. Paul and presented the Smart Growth Twin Cities development scenarios to the Metropolitan Council, the area’s regional planning agency....
Jim Jacoby, a developer who made millions building Wal-Marts on greenfield sites, has made a 180-degree turn in terms of environmental sustainability. Jacoby is the developer behind Atlantic Station, the intensive infill/brownfield redevelopment in...
Despite an abundance of compact, walkable, mixed-use towns dating back to the 19th, 18th, and even 17th centuries, Connecticut has been slow to welcome new developments that carry on those traits. Now the affluent town of Madison, about 20 miles...
The County Council in Los Alamos, New Mexico, unanimously approved a master plan for downtown Los Alamos, which could nearly triple the amount of commercial space. The plan was generated in a 2000 charrette led by Moule & Polyzoides Architects...
A 90-acre town center is under construction in Baxter Village, in Fort Mills, South Carolina. A main street connected to a hybrid of a conventional and new urban residential neighborhood, the town center will include about 130,000 square feet of...
Two projects show the future of production-built New UrbanismWest Park
Village and Longleaf — about 15 miles apart in the Tampa/St. Petersburg region — are two of a new generation of traditional neighborhood developments (TNDs). Both started...
In the redevelopment of a military base in Calgary, the Canada Lands Company discovers New Urbanism as the road to community building and financial success.
Quietly and with great speed, Garrison Woods has emerged as one of Canada’s most successful...
The movement needs more developers, more research, and strong standards, according to some.
The biggest challenge to New Urbanism is how to expand it well beyond its current minor share of the US development market.
That’s the conclusion that...