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.
The first townhouses and detached homes are now nearing completion in Coffee Creek Center, a 640-acre new urbanist project in Chesterton, Indiana. Also under construction are a 192-unit apartment building, a 120-room hotel, and a 50,000 sq.ft....
The City of Charlotte, North Carolina, and Mecklenburg County are entering into negotiations with the Palladium Company with regard to the firm’s proposal for a mixed-use development in Charlotte’s First Ward district. The plan by Elkus-Manfredi...
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...
A bipartisan group of US Representatives from New York and Massachusetts have introduced the Brownfield Redevelopment Incentives Act in the House. The Act would fund site assessment and cleanup on abandoned industrial sites.
The City of Lenexa, Kansas, has signed a letter of intent with the Gainesville, Florida-based Haile Group to develop a new urbanist city center. A preliminary plan for the 62-acre site has been created by urban designer Michael Morrissey and Haile...
Work has begun on the commercial town center in Lowry, the redevelopment of an 1,866-acre Air Force base on the Denver/Aurora town line in Colorado. A 50,000 sq. ft. Al-bertson’s supermarket anchors the town center, which will include 118,000 square...
New urbanist design firm Correa Valle Valle of Coral Gables, Florida, has won two smart growth awards for its charrette and plan for a redevelopment of a historic industrial neighborhood in Asheville, North Carolina.
Morrison Homes, a national building firm with experience in several new urbanist developments, has conducted a study to determine how appreciation rates in three traditional neighborhood developments (TNDs), Kentlands, Celebration, and Laguna West,...
John Anderson of New Urban Builders offers 10 tips on designing neighborhoods and homes for energy conservation in sunny north central California: 1) Orient the long side of a rectilinear block running north/south — this allows narrow and deep lots...
The new master plan for Gorham’s Bluff in Alabama strives for greater economic diversity and proposes an innovative integration of an assisted living center.
When this remote community in the Appalachian Mountains was first designed in 1993, it...