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.
After several slow years, Middleton Hills near Madison, Wisconsin, is hitting its stride. Last year was the project’s best, with sales of 29 single home lots, plus 8 townhomes and live/work units. Fifty-five units of senior housing were completed....
“It [New Urbanism] is currently a boutique market that appeals to a segment of the home-buying market (empty nesters, singles, young professionals). Unfortunately, there are still many government regulatory and community perception hurdles to...
Rep. Mark Udall (CO) recently introduced the Urban Sprawl and Smart Growth Study Act. The Act requires the Council on Environmental Quality to update previous studies of the economic, environmental and land-use
effects of sprawl; make...
In May, Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening appointed Harriet Tregoning as Special Secretary for Smart Growth, establishing a new cabinet post which will focus exclusively on transportation, land-use, and growth issues.
“The governor created the...
Thousands of local codes nationwide prohibit small lots and blocks, narrow streets, shallow setbacks, a mixture of uses, and other elements of pedestrian-scale neighborhoods. This reality makes it difficult for new urbanist developments to gain...
In Lakewood, Colorado, 100 acres of shopping mall and parking lots is about to yield to an urban center.
The Villa Italia Mall is typical of the ailing, greyfield malls that line the nation’s suburban corridors. On the cutting edge of retail...
The winners of the 2001 Charter Awards are celebrated in a 32-page booklet available from CNU. The publication shows how these 15 projects fulfilled the principles of the Charter of the New Urbanism, and why the jurors picked them from the 208...
Tysons Corner in northern Virginia is one of the largest “edge cities,” with the nation’s 14th largest daytime office population and a retail concentration second only to New York City on the East Coast, according to the Washington Post. But the...
A 680-acre new urbanist development, the Village of WestClay, is also located in Carmel. Brenwick TND Communities plans for up to 1,362 residential units, including apartments, single-family dwellings on a variety of lot sizes, attached townhomes,...
A substantial amount of new construction has taken place in Olde Towne Gaithersburg, Maryland, since a new urbanist plan and urban design guidelines were adopted in the mid-1990s. Recent developments include a building with 65,000 square feet of...
NorthWest Crossing, a new urbanist project with offices, shops, civic buildings, parks, and 1,300 housing units, has been planned for Bend, Oregon. The project, designed by Walker Macy Landscape Architects and Planners and Fletcher Farr Ayotte...
The first grouping of homes around a square has been completed in Annesgrove, upstate New York’s first traditional neighborhood development. The houses in the Onondaga County project are clad in vinyl, but the developer has taken advantage of new...