What is Smart Growth?

Communities across the country are facing tremendous challenges. Many of our towns and cities are growing faster than we can manage while others are looking for ways to jumpstart or restart stalled growth. Shortsighted planning often sacrifices the long-term fiscal health of our communities -- starving our established downtown businesses, overlooking existing investments in our older communities, eating up our farms and open spaces and damaging our environment while driving up the cost of housing and transportation and creating health and safety issues for seniors and for children.

Smart growth brings the benefits of more jobs, a broader tax base, reasonably priced housing and a healthy economy with fewer of the costs of poorly planned development. We can rebuild our existing communities and design new ones so that our children can grow up in healthy environments where they can safely walk to school or to the corner store to get a popsicle.

Getting there from where we are today can look like an overwhelming task. The good news is that a lot of the job can be done simply by allowing walkable, mixed-use development to happen. Removing regulatory obstacles is the first step in leveling the playing field so that development that meets our community’s goals has an easier time than less well-planned growth. But many community leaders are overwhelmed by the tasks of changing the existing development patterns, overhauling outdated plans and rewriting laws and regulations.

As you begin the work of reviewing and revising your policies, standards, codes and zoning, remember that your role is NOT to be the keepers of the rulebooks but to be a steward of your community's future.

Smart growth seeks to achieve these seven goals :

  • Healthier, Safer Communities
  • Protecting the Environment
  • Better Access, Less Traffic
  • Thriving Cities, Suburbs And Towns
  • Shared Benefits
  • Lower Costs, Lower Taxes
  • Keeping Open Space Open

These goals are shaped by the Ten Principles of Smart Growth .