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.
Urban designer suggests eight principles for revitalizing an urban port.
Building on the successful reinvigoration of its downtown riverfront, the City of Providence, Rhode Island, is pursuing a redevelopment of Narragansett Landing, a 650-acre...
Editor’s note. This is the first in a series of articles that will explore the economic realities behind new urbanist development projects.
West Bend Village in Bend,Oregon, was the first attempt at New Urbanism for developer Mike Tennant. The 22...
Alexander Cooper of Cooper Robertson & Partners, a New York firm that has designed many new urbanist (NU) communities, was hired by the World Trade Center leaseholder to plan reconstruction of the site.
Cooper was hired along with David Childs...
The group Students for the New Urbanism at the University of Georgia in Athens has drafted a plan for improvements at a local mobile home park. The design adds amenities such as a community building and small businesses and fits 20 more trailers...
Alex Dunser, former project director of Rosemary Beach in Florida, has founded Wolf TND Consulting LLC, a consulting firm specializing in the location, acquisition, entitlement, development, and marketing of traditional neighborhood developments.
CNU’s street guidebook for California suggests steps toward better highways.
Across the United States, activists and engineers have been figuring out how to turn urban stretches of state highways into civic amenities. CNU is joining the discussion...
The Dallas branch of RTKL Associates has designed a mixed-use town center for The Woodlands, a 27,000-acre planned conventional community outside Houston. Since its establishment in the early 1970s, the Woodlands has grown to approximately 40,000...
A mixed-use, infill development is now under construction in the historic Viewmont neighborhood in Hickory, North Carolina. Viewmont Square will feature 36 Charleston-style townhouses and a retail building topped by two floors of condominiums. Other...
I. Past and Future
Category: public open space. Subcategory: plazas and squares.
Within a traditional urban fabric, public space has an identity; it exists as more than mere residue after the construction of buildings and roads....
Architect and town planner Leon Krier, the foremost European influence on the New Urbanism, weighs in on the future of growth in England.
Krier suggests that England needs to loosen its restrictive planning laws and should release several...
Neighborhood-scale projects completed or under construction rose by 37 percent in 2001, turning new urbanist plans into reality at an unprecedented rate.
So many new urbanist projects have slowly worked their way through the
planning pipeline...
The City of San Jose, California, has hired the Palladium Company to build retail, housing, and offices on five blocks in the city’s center. Palladium is the developer of the mixed-use CityPlace town center in West Palm Beach, Florida. The company’s...