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.
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...
National Geographic now offers a new urbanism primer online that compares the effects of urban and suburban design. An interactive tour allows the user to select images within a main street scene while text explains advantages of transportation,...
The Brookings Institution’s discussion paper “Exposing Urban Legends: The Real Purchasing Power of Central City Neighborhoods” dissects and disproves private marketing data fed to the public about inner city neighborhoods. See www. brookings.edu.
Town Planning Studio is a new joint venture of new urbanist practitioners from the Midwest and the West. The venture is made up of R. John Anderson from Chico, California; Peter Swift from Longmont, Colorado; and Patti Banks, Brian Hendrickson,...
Transit-oriented development makes inroads in a conservative region.
In July, organizations in Idaho's Treasure Valley joined CNU in kicking off
a series of workshops to create a deep local consensus around the New Urbanism. The Treasure Valley...
Norton Commons, a TND in Louisville, Kentucky, has broken ground after four years of design and approval. The 600-acre site will include 2,800 new residences, retail, and a 20-acre commercial office campus. Triad Development Co. of Louisville is the...
Montebello Village is a 36-acre TND designed at a recent charrette and scheduled to break ground this fall in Greenville, South Carolina. The design by Alberto & Associates of Haddonfield, New Jersey, with architect David Mayernik, proposes 110...