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.
The development of farmland, forest, and other open space accelerated rapidly in the 1990s, according to recent government figures. The rate of “greenfield” development was more than three million acres a year from 1992 to 1997 – double the rate of...
The New Urbanism looks to defunct malls as possible sites for infill
development
Most cities have at least one “ghost” mall, a once-thriving enclosed mall turned boarded-up eyesore. It may have have been brought down by a bigger and flashier...
The previous millennium saw the design and construction of the world’s great cities and cathedrals. New York City, arguably the greatest metropolis at the end of the second millennium A.D., was a wilderness in 1626 when European settlers purchased...
Southside, a new urbanist redevelopment of a Victorian neighborhood in Greensboro, North Carolina, is now cleared to break ground in early spring of 2000. Designed by Tom Low of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. and developed by Nate Bowman, Southside...
LUME 4, NUMBERS 1–6 (January/February – November/December, 1999)
Feature articles Issue, page
CITIES/INFILL
Pumping life into a city with urban design Jan/Feb 1, 3-6
Downtowns gaining population nationwide Jan/Feb 6
True urbanists May/Jun 1, 6...
Live/work units, an updated version of the old live-above-the-shop storefront, now are built or under construction in a handful of new urbanist projects. Units are built or under construction at Vermillion in Huntersville, North Carolina, Kentlands...
Until very recently, retail has been a mostly unrealized dream of the New Urbanism. The promise of integrating residential and commercial uses is an essential ingredient in the recipe for traditional neighborhood development (TND), but few new...
The Town Council of Huntington, New York, approved smart growth principles on October 5, 1999, that support the development of walkable, mixed-use, neighborhoods. A nonprofit citizens group, Vision Huntington, spearheaded an effective campaign to...
Comprehensive Design Solutions (CDS) in Hilton Head, South Carolina, now offers TND developers help in creating better homes and streetscapes. The firm’s developer kits include two categories of portfolios: One features 10 floor plans and three...
Homes in I’On, a TND in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, have proved popular. Housing values in this TND have skyrocketed due, in part, to a red-hot real estate market. A colonial-style single home that sold originally for $164,000 in February, 1998...
A visit to new urbanist communities in Oregon inspired South Dakota developer Doug Metcalf to bring aspects of TND to Brandon, a city of 6,000 inhabitants outside Sioux Falls. Metcalf designed the 40-acre Tall Grass Village adjacent to an upscale...
Midtown Commons, a 79-acre traditional neighborhood development (TND) near Madison, Wisconsin, is planned to become the focal point of the approximately 500-acre High Point/Raymond neighborhood now beginning construction. Though Midtown Commons is...