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.
As the nation’s largest financier of commercial and residential real estate, Bank of America wields considerable influence in the market, and the bank now claims it wants to use that influence to make the market more attentive to environmental...
Top West Coast new urbanist projects and plans were recognized at the Smart Growth conference in San Diego, when the Local Government Commission’s Center for Livable Communities presented its annual Ahwahnee Awards.
The awards for projects built in...
Pulte Homes’ Florida region remains committed to trying New Urbanism after Salamanca’s defeat.
Pulte Homes, the nation’s largest home builder, has struggled for three years to get approval for Salamanca, a 160-acre traditional neighborhood...
Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company has designed the Life magazine Dream House for 2000. The Lifespan House, as the dwelling is called, is under construction in I’On, a traditional neighborhood development in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Designed...
The Environmental Journalism Center has published Covering Urban Sprawl: Rethinking the American Dream, a primer for journalists on the social, economic, and
environmental impacts of sprawl, by David Goldberg of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution....
At the Fall task force meeting, CNU decided to reorganize the task forces. We have grown in membership and initiatives, and are adapting to these changes. A new format for task forces will make getting involved easier and more rewarding. We will...
Construction began on the Fruitvale Transit Village in Oakland, California, in November. The $100 million, mixed-use project is centered on the Fruitvale Bay Area Rapid Transit station. A retail and entertainment paseo will replace a current parking...
The completed renovation of a nursery building from the 1920s gives Historic Malbis in Daphne, Alabama, an architectural focal point and a link to the Greek farmers who first settled on the site in the early 1900s. The 2,500 square-foot building...
Washington, D.C., has some good examples of new urbanist infill housing. Parkside, in the Northeast section of the city, shows that affordable new urbanist housing can be built on a strict budget. The 26-acre site currently includes townhomes,...
Victoria Courts is a 10-block, 44-acre new urbanist neighborhood planned by the San Antonio Housing Authority (SAHA). The housing authority has announced that it will demolish old public housing on the site and seek a developer through a request for...
Dadeland Mall in the Miami suburb of Kendall is not about to be boarded up. Business is good, and the mall and its surroundings enjoy status as a “regional activity center.” But in the last 30 years, a chaotic suburban landscape of piecemeal...
The third annual Partners for Smart Growth conference was held in San Diego in mid-November, drawing more than 1,000 attendees, including two governors. The conference, organized by the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and the US Environmental Protection...