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.
Montgomery County, Maryland, is pursuing two transit-oriented development (TOD) projects around the Twinbrook and Shady Grove stations on the Washington DC region’s Metro system. Two charrettes, led by Design Collective, an architecture and planning...
In Costa Contra County, California, a February charrette produced a new vision for development around the Pleasant Hill BART commuter rail station. The design team included architects and town planners Lennertz Coyle & Associates, New Urbanism...
CNU has released its mall study, Greyfields into Goldfields, in which PricewaterhouseCoopers concludes that approximately 7 percent of the nation’s regional malls are greyfields, i.e., in steep decline and ripe for redevelopment. The firm...
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention turn their attention to the connection between community design and people’s level of physical activity.
For decades, health scientists have warned us that Americans are more sedentary and more obese...
An emphasis on urban design inspired by community involvement is evident at an increasing number of architecture schools. The College Architecture and Design at Lawrence Technological University in South-field, Michigan, has documented one such...
Canada’s Grow Homes and Next Homes have made home ownership affordable through reduced size and modular design. The concept may be a good fit for small-lot, traditional neighborhoods.
The first Grow Home prototype was built on the campus of...
Portland, Oregon, well known for its urban growth boundary and transit villages, may get the nation’s first Home Depot designed to fit into a Main Street setting. The 166,000 sq. ft. Halsey Place project represents a radical step for the nation’s...
The Hillier Group Architects has expanded to include an Urban Design Practice. Hillier staff members who will compose the core group of urban designers include: Scott Killinger, managing principal of Hillier Philadelphia; D. Thomas Stearns, a...
Town center residential sales in Avalon Park, a TND in east Orlando, are off to a strong start. The first day of opening presales brought the sale of 30 of the 80 townhomes planned for the town center. Prices range from $120,000 to $140,000, and...
After 12 years on the drawing board, Embry Mill (formerly Boulder), a planned greenfield development in Virginia, has won rezoning approval from Stafford County. Among other factors, a controversy over impact fees and a recession has kept the...
Many major US cities are gaining population for the first time in decades, according to the latest numbers from the 2000 census. “This is the first hard evidence that the predictions of an urban renaissance are true,” Robert Lang of the Fannie Mae...
Category: public open space. Subcategory: plazas and squares.
Most urban open space, whether it is a plaza, square, or green, is detached from the surrounding blocks by a surrounding street. An attached open space is one that shares its urban...