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.
It’s not every day that new construction gets an award for historic preservation. But in North Carolina, the Historic Preservation Society of Durham gave its George and Mary Pyne Historic Preservation Award to the new urbanist infill development in...
The Bloomfield, Michigan, Township Board of Trustees unanimously rejected plans for Bloomfield Park proposed by developer Craig Schubiner of Harbor Companies. The master plan by Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company called for 1,000 apartments mixed...
The Town of Cranford, New Jersey, still has a traditional, mixed-use downtown, and town officials are taking a proactive approach to staying competitive while keeping growth small-scale and incremental. Alberto & Associates of Odessa, Delaware,...
The recent approval of Vickery, a new urbanist village development in Forsyth County, Georgia, (see October/November 2000) came at a price. Reacting to fears of density among the area’s residents, the Forsyth Commission cut the number of housing...
Public officials in Frisco, Texas, visited new urbanist town centers in nearby Addison and Plano, and decided their city needed something similar. A 140-acre site, which extends from Frisco’s historic downtown to the busy Dallas North Tollway,...
High-tech wizards, nose rings, and the proliferation of “bourgeois bohemians” may all be harbingers of a renaissance in American urbanism, according to some experts. A recent conference in Atlanta, “The New Urbanism for the New Economy,” explored...
The developers of Mashpee Commons transform a lackluster street and balance the mix of local and national retailers.
Over the past 10 years, Mashpee Commons’ pedestrian-oriented shopping district has grown incrementally around an outdated strip...
A new town center offers urban life to sprawling corporate park.
The first new urbanist town center within an existing business development is opening in the sprawling corporate park of Legacy in Plano, Texas, 20 miles north of downtown Dallas....
There have been few opportunities o date to test the effectiveness of modern architecture in the New Urbanism, especially in individual homes. However, modern architecture has sometimes been used effectively in mixed-use buildings in new urbanist...
Consumer surveys in seven cities find that around 30 percent of respondents would seriously consider a new urbanist housing product. Everyone involved in building the New Urbanism (NU) — designers, developers, and financial backers — would like...
Creating the Not So Big House, architect Sarah Susanka’s sequel to her 1998 best seller The Not So Big House, includes a profile of a home in Habersham, a TND in Beaufort, South Carolina. Designer Eric Moser’s floor plan breaks the traditional...
A gathering of policy makers and new urbanists explore how building compact and walkable communities can help improve public health.
Unfortunately, poor urban design affects every aspect of life. Fortunately, surprising constituencies are now...