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.
Avirtual city on the nternet proposed by Andres Duany to promote the New Urbanism is on hold, according to the Miami architect. The urban Transect, upon which the internet site will be based, is still not fully developed as a concept, Duany says....
Mixed-use research and academic communities in the form of traditional neighborhood developments (TNDs) are among the latest design challenges facing new urbanists.
Universities historically have employed great urban design on campus, and some...
A new urbanist neighborhood throws away its architectural codes to promote contemporary designs.
Prospect was the first new urbanist (NU) project to get off the ground in Colorado, and now it is breaking new ground nationally with its use of...
Patience has paid off in San Jose, California, where two development projects are completed in the Jackson-Taylor neighborhood and a third is under construction. The city adopted Calthorpe Associates’ specific plan and design guidelines for the area...
HOK Planning Group, a division of Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum, Inc. (HOK), one of the world’s largest architecture firms with more than 1,800 employees worldwide, has formed the New Urban Studio. The studio is led by three experienced new urbanist...
“Advance scouts for urban sprawl” is how one commentator characterizes public school systems in the new report from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Historic Neighborhood Schools in the Age of Sprawl: Why Johnny Can’t Walk to School. At...
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) is running a controversial $1 million ad campaign using sprawl as a reason to limit immigration. The group claims that sprawl is caused, for the most part, by mass immigration. Anti-sprawl groups...
The Town Council of Huntington Township, New York, has selected Ron Stein as the municipality’s first smart growth coordinator. Stein founded the nonprofit group Vision Huntington, which spearheaded an effective campaign to get public officials and...
Historic American Towns along the Atlantic Coast, a book by Warren Boerschenstein of the University of Virginia, surveys more than 140 towns that have survived in relative isolation and features detailed discussions of nine of these human-scale...
A Texas project is selling a lot of homes at an affordable price, while maintaining the essence of the New Urbanism.
Before breaking ground on Plum Creek in Kyle, Texas, Steve Tucker of Benchmark Land Development went on a tour of famous new...
A new advocacy coalition, Smart Growth America, releases report on Americans’ changing attitudes toward sprawl. Americans are ready for new approaches to managing growth in their communities, the new poll suggests. Seventy-eight percent of...
The first tangible results of the state’s push for a new paradigm are becoming visible, but the commitment of some local governments lags behind.
Maryland’s smart growth initiative helped to spark a national debate on land use shortly after it...