Smart Growth
Streetsblog Basics
Livable Streets or Tall Buildings? Cities Can Have Both
Kaid Benfield's new blog post on density is getting a lot of buzz over at NRDC's Switchboard blog. Benfield, a planner/lawyer/professor/writer who co-founded both LEED's Neighborhood Development rating system and the Smart Growth America coalition, has some serious street cred when it comes to these matters. And on this one, he's with Danish architect Jan Gehl, who says wonderful places are built at human-scale density -- three to six stories.
October 6, 2014
Will Montgomery County Botch the Streets in a Model Suburban Retrofit?
Four years ago, White Flint, a neighborhood of North Bethesda, Maryland, most known for its shopping mall, caught the attention of urbanists around the nation with a proposal to reimagine car-oriented suburban streets as a walkable, mixed-use, transit-oriented neighborhood. Montgomery County adopted a plan for the town that would narrow its wide arterial roadways and make them safe and accommodating for transit riders, bicyclists, and pedestrians. It was hailed as a model for other suburbs around the nation looking to become less sprawling and more walkable.
October 1, 2014
Trading Cars for Transit Passes “in the Middle of the Corn and Soybeans”
This post is part of a series featuring stories and research that will be presented at the Pro-Walk/Pro-Bike/Pro-Place conference September 8-11 in Pittsburgh.
August 15, 2014
State DOTs Let Roads Fall Apart While Splurging on Highway Expansion
Even though 33 percent of its roads are in "poor" condition, West Virginia spends about 73 percent of its road budget building new roads and adding lanes. Mississippi spends 97 percent of its road money on expansion. Texas, 82 percent.
March 12, 2014
Warning Signs From Columbus About America’s Big Suburban Housing Glut
Columbus, Ohio, is a convenient microcosm of the United States as a whole.
January 24, 2014
Q&A With Robert Grow: How Utah Decided to Embrace “Quality Growth”
If you’ve ever wondered how a deep-red state like Utah has managed to build some of the most ambitious transit expansions in the country, the short answer is: Envision Utah.
December 2, 2013
Study: Kids Who Live in Walkable Neighborhoods Get More Exercise
A study published this month in the American Journal of Preventive Health finds that children who live in walkable places -- "smart growth neighborhoods," to use the authors' phrase -- get significantly more exercise than their peers who live in suburban environments designed for driving.
September 11, 2013
The Defense Department’s Embrace of Livability Will Save Money — and Lives
On Tuesday, we wrote about the Defense Department’s new rules for the design of their bases and installations. These rules make smart growth the law of the land on hundreds of vast military installations in the U.S. and abroad. There’s more to the story: In this post we examine how a smart growth development model will bring wide-ranging benefits to the defense complex.
June 20, 2013
New Pentagon Mandate: Make Military Bases Livable, That’s an Order!
This article is the first in a series about the U.S. military’s new embrace of smart growth planning.
June 18, 2013
William Fulton on Why Smart Growth Pays and Sprawl Decays
Earlier this week, Smart Growth America released an important study that illustrates how walkable development results in huge savings and significantly better returns for municipalities compared to car-centric development.
May 23, 2013