Smart Growth Principles

By Jim Dickens

 Create Range of Housing Opportunities and Choices Providing quality housing for people of all income levels is an integral component in any smart growth strategy.

 Create Walkable Neighborhoods Walkable communities are desirable places to live, work, learn, worship and play, and therefore a key component of smart growth.

 Encourage Community and Stakeholder Collaboration Growth can create great places to live, work and play -- if it responds to a community's own sense of how and where it wants to grow.

 Foster Distinctive, Attractive Places with a Strong Sense of Place Smart growth encourages communities to craft a vision and set standards for development and construction which respond to community values of architectural beauty and distinctiveness, as well as expanded choices in housing and transportation.

 Make Development Decisions Predictable, Fair and Cost Effective For a community to be successful in implementing smart growth, it must be embraced by the private sector.

 Mix Land Uses Smart growth supports the integration of mixed land uses into communities as a critical component of achieving better places to live.

 Preserve Open Space, Farmland, Natural Beauty and Critical Environmental Areas Open space preservation supports smart growth goals by bolstering local economies, preserving critical environmental areas, improving our communities quality of life, and guiding new growth into existing communities.

 Provide a Variety of Transportation Choices Providing people with more choices in housing, shopping, communities, and transportation is a key aim of smart growth.

 Strengthen and Direct Development Towards Existing Communities Smart growth directs development towards existing communities already served by infrastructure, seeking to utilize the resources that existing neighborhoods offer, and conserve open space and irreplaceable natural resources on the urban fringe.

 Take Advantage of Compact Building Design Smart growth provides a means for communities to incorporate more compact building design as an alternative to conventional, land consumptive development.

For more information on Smart Growth Principles, visit http://www.smartgrowth.org/