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.
A new partnership has been established between TND Advisors LLC, an affiliate of the Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND) Fund, and Hillman Properties Inc., a subsidiary of The Hillman Company, of Pittsburgh, to provide equity capital for TNDs...
Some of the nation’s largest retailers, including Home Depot, Wal-mart, and Sears, are opening small, compact stores on selected main street locations. Recent surveys, like one by Kurt Salmon Associates, show a significant (21 percent) increase in...
The report Emerging Trends in Real Estate 1999, by PricewaterhouseCoopers, once again reports that the best real estate investments are metropolitan regions with healthy, pedestrian-oriented downtowns. The top cities — San Francisco, Seattle, New...
The land use plan for Curtis Park West, one of the first new urbanist neighborhoods proposed on a “brownfield,” inner city site, was presented to the Sacramento Planning Commission in November. The first session for the project’s Environmental...
Madison, Georgia, recently adopted a zoning ordinance creating a Traditional Neighborhood District. It requires compact, mixed-use, pedestrian-oriented streets that must be interconnected, with blocks at least 300 feet but no more than 600 feet in...
Brylen Homes is building houses with innovative windows in Amelia Park, a traditional neighborhood development (TND) in Fernandina Beach, Florida. Using a technique that makes aluminum windows appear similar to traditional wood windows, Brylen...
What does it take to get a traditional neighborhood development (TND) approved? The answer may be different in every municipality, but in Chesterton, Indiana, a favorable legal framework, educated municipal planners, and a determined developer all...
As of late 1998, only about 20,000 people live in new urbanist communities. The movement is still very young, yet strong anecdotal evidence suggests that the New Urbanism encourages social interaction to a far greater degree than conventional...
In Portland, Oregon, the Westside Max light rail line opened in September, 1998, and looks like a big success. Just two weeks after the 18-mile, $800 million line opened, light rail ridership in Portland was 22 percent above projections. Part of the...
The biggest redevelopment to date of a suburban shopping center into a mixed-use neighborhood may break ground in the spring of 1999 in San Jose, California. Federal Realty Investment Trust, based in Bethesda, Maryland, plans 1,200 residential units...
An Environmental Forum at the fall Board meeting of the Congress for the New Urbanism brought representatives of leading environmental groups together with CNU officials. The participants examined common interests and points of contention between...
CNU recently received funding from the Surdna Foundation to support efforts to mobilize a constituency of critical mass for new urbanist approaches to urban revitalization. Two key projects have been funded: the Implementation Task Force will look...