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.
Landscape architect David Yocca and his firm Conservation Design Forum of Elmhurst, Illinois, have been hired to design a new urbanist community on an 831-acre site in the small town of Plano, about 50 miles from downtown Chicago. Yocca has...
The third phase of Heritage at Freemason Harbour, an infill development in downtown Norfolk, Virginia, was recently completed. The project now has 184 apartments and a one-block main street, which includes a 3,000 square foot grocery store....
Ellen Dunham-Jones was hired to direct the architecture program at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Dunham-Jones, a charter member of the Congress for the New Urbanism, is leaving her position as associate professor of architecture at the Massachusetts...
Four smart growth awards, out of 17 total awarded by the State of Maryland, went to the City of Gaithersburg and projects in that municipality. The city won an award for its overall smart growth policy. An award was given to Market Square, the town...
Westbury, a good-looking Hope VI project, has begun construction in Portsmouth, Virginia. Hope VI is the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s nationwide program to redevelop failed public housing projects into mixed-use, mixed-income...
If CNU has its way, developers of the future will be building mixed-income, mixed-use projects as a matter of course. When that day comes, they may look back at a September 2000 meeting at the Seaside Institute in Seaside, Florida, as a seminal...
CNU recently held a landmark meeting with officials from the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC). It was the first time that the mall industry has met with advocates and developers over the growing issue of failing shopping centers,...
The Sierra Club’s publication Smart Choices or Sprawling Growth: A 50-State Survey of Development marks the first time the leadership of a major environmental group has endorsed specific development projects and examined not only the location of...
Denver infill development is the first of its kind.
The first cohousing community built as part of a traditional neighborhood development broke ground in Denver, Colorado, in October. Hearthstone, a 33-unit cohousing project on 1.6 acres, will be...
Federal Small Business Administration loans support sprawl, according to a lawsuit filed by environmentalists. Friends of the Earth and the Forest Conservation Council analyzed SBA loans in the Washington, DC, area during the last three years and...
One of the basic tenets of new urbanist planning is to establish an open street grid that promotes the free flow of pedestrian and automobile traffic. But what if a closed street has become a haven for pedestrians? Should the need for...
Plans for Bloomfield Park have been formally submitted to the planning department in Bloomfield Township, Michigan. The township has a building height restriction of 32 feet in its master plan, but developer Harbor Cos. proposes to build office...