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.
In another expansion of his smart growth initiative, Gov. Parris Glendening hopes to appoint what may be the nation’s highest ranking state official to deal exclusively with smart growth development. The Maryland General Assembly is considering the...
As part of a restructuring of Post Properties, Senior Executive Vice President Art Lomenick left the company and joined Workplace USA, a Dallas firm specializing in office development in mixed-use projects. Lomenick was in charge of Post’s...
Brad Shapiro, an architect with Looney Ricks Kiss of Memphis for the past 12 years, has formed his own firm, Shapiro & Company Architects also based in Memphis. The firm’s emphasis will be on TND architecture. Shapiro’s work includes designs for...
The US Department of Housing and Urban Development has chosen CNU to run an award program, “The New Face of America's Public Housing.” It will recognize HOPE VI projects that best demonstrate innovation and leadership in the transformation of...
For the first time, new urbanist principles may be applied to the redevelopment of housing in an active military base. The plan is to convert 1950s and 1960s style housing in Fort Lewis in Washington State to a compact, mixed-use neighborhood with...
Las Colinas, a well-known edge city outside of Dallas, recently hired new urbanist planner Andres Duany to design approximately 600 acres on the northeast end of the city. The site, stretching from the city’s east side to the LBJ Freeway, is one of...
The City Council in Redwood City, California, has approved a plan for revitalizing its downtown. The design by Field Paoli Architects of San Francisco proposes two new structures, covering two city blocks, that will house 80,000 square feet of...
Australia and New Zealand are making their own way along a new urbanist path.
While Australia and New Zealand share many of the challenges facing North America, there are also some important differences in both context and outcomes. Proactive...
Building homes the old-fashioned way yields lucrative returns in North Carolina.
A development of new homes in a historic city neigh borhood riddled with vacant lots would seem an unlikely candidate for a 42 percent rate of return on investment...
Density is a crucial factor when measuring the environmental impact of development, because it affects land consumption, stormwater runoff, automobile usage, and transit usage. There is much misunderstanding on this subject, mostly because density...
In the year 2018, the NIMBY wars are over, consumers have learned to recognize the difference between hybrid new urbanist developments and the real thing, and typological coding has replaced conventional zoning. These and other hopeful predictions...
CNU and the movement in general generates increasingly sophisticated coverage.
One way to take the pulse of the new urbanist movement is to see how we are being portrayed in major newspapers, magazines, and web sites. CNU continues to have a...