SMART GROWTH

Ney York Cafe

Smart Growth is obviously different from Dumb Growth. But what is it specifically?

Smart Growth refers to quite a large number of approaches to land use and economic development. Short city blocks. Mixed-use buildings. Mixed-income housing. Protection of the natural environment. Strong urban boundaries. Increased public and neighborhood involvement in decision making. These are just a few of the policies associated with Smart Growth.

Is Smart Growth, then, nothing but a grab-bag of disparate policies and settlement patterns lumped together for bureaucratic convenience?

Not at all. Each of the approaches listed above work together toward the creation of attractive, ‘walkable’ towns and cities with well-defined boundaries. Each of them help define anew, in keeping with our modern needs, something that has nonetheless been with us since the time of the ancients--the idea of a good place to live: a community.

The links below will help walk you through the details.

“There’s no excuse to build anything that doesn’t add to the beauty of a city.”

~Joseph Riley, Mayor of Charleston , South Carolina

General

Get yourself an electronic copy of “This is Smart Growth,” an excellent brochure which condenses this complex concept into ten ‘smart growth’ principles (32 pages).

This power point presentation from Ventura, California provides lots of graphic illustrations of Smart Growth design principles.

Transportation aspects

A new study by the Center for Neighborhood Technology explains how true household costs are now a function of the cost of real estate and the cost of transportation. For a faster-loading overview of the study, go to this briefer version here.

The National Complete Streets Coalition calls for putting 'streets on a diet ' so that they can accommodate the full spectrum of transportation modes, including bikes, mass transit, pedestrians and the handicapped. It shows lots of pictures of traffic-calmed streets. (Note: A downside to this site is the false impression it creates of bike lanes as necessarily a boon for cyclist safety.)

Protecting the Environment

As part of their ‘Green Communities’ project, the NRDC and Enterprise Community Partners bring us a linkable listing of projects where communities have built mixed-income and affordable housing while keeping at the forefront energy and resource conservation.

Economic aspects

A number of independent analyses have demonstrated the relative advantages to a city economy of having locally-owned, as opposed to national chain stores, predominate in a city neighborhood. See for example this local business study from Austin, Texas, produced by LivableCity and Civic Economics.

A somewhat contrasting point of view is provided by Robert Gibbs, a new urbanist town planner with considerable expertise in retail, who believes that both large chains and small stores are needed in an urbanizing area which wants to have a secure commercial future. A shift back to main street.

Yet another analysis, this one by the Institute for Local Self Reliance, questions the local economic benefits of big box retail vs. locally-owned. Big box economic impact studies.