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.
Proposal to build neighborhood faces uphill battle.
For close to two years, developer Joe Duckworth has been seeking approval for Woodmont, a traditional neighborhood development (TND) planned for a 42.6-acre vacant site in the affluent Lower...
Despite the recession, retail analyst Robert Gibbs predicts that commer-cial town center developments will proliferate as the growth in conventional malls stalls.
In recent years, one of the most prominent trends in the shopping center industry has...
The Stapleton development in Denver has a Workforce Housing Program designed to ensure that at least 10 percent of the for-sale homes will be relatively affordable. A total of 800 condominiums, townhomes, and duplexes will be built under this...
Claymont — an unincorporated village on the Philadelphia Pike in New Castle County, Delaware — has suffered physically from sprawl since the 1960s in the form of too many fast-food franchises, gas stations, and other strip commercial uses with...
Ayrsley, the largest and densest new urban project in Charlotte, North Carolina, to date, is breaking ground on a 140-acre site bounded by Interstate 485 and South Tryon Street. The northern half of the site is planned around a boulevard terminating...
Robert and Daryl Davis, the founders of Seaside, Florida, received the 2001 Seaside Prize in a ceremony in December. The award has been given annually since 1993 to individuals or organizations making significant contributions to the quality and...
CNU has released a new report, “Correcting the Record,” which corrects
some of the misinformation spread by pro-sprawl impresario Wendell Cox. The CNU report was released at Rail-Volution, a national transportation and land-use conference at which...
The events of September 11, and the subsequent economic plunge of the airline industry, have revived arguments for a better nationwide passenger rail system. The $15-billion bailout of airlines, which were already losing money prior to the attacks,...
III. Parking/plaza techniques
Category: public open space.
Subcategory: plazas and squares.
There is a strong reflex for a designer simply to attach the label “parking lot” to an area and then to get on with the design of the building. In fact...
The Greater Minnesota Housing Fund has published “Building Better Neighborhoods,” a 92-page book that lays out many new urban design principles as tools for Minnesota towns to build affordable housing in mixed-income neighborhoods. The book,...
James Howard Kunstler, pessimist extraordinaire, traveled much of the Western world recently, and he’s brought back vivid tales of eight cities, at least three of which are in his view going straight to hell.
The nation’s largest charitable foundation dedicated to health issues, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has funded a new, $24.5-million project that links health and smart growth principles. Active Living Through Design, to be headquartered at...