Smart Growth

Sprawl

Advantages to Communities

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What is Smart Growth?

Smart growth focuses on the patterns in which we build our communities. It encourages the development of walkable compact neighborhoods located in proximity to commercial services, schools, protected green space and recreational opportunities, public transportation, and employment centers so that trips can be conveniently made by a variety of means including public transit, foot, bicycle and car.
Growth is "smart" when it uses land efficiently and respects its natural values, provides a variety of housing and transportation choices, and focuses on building communities for people. It accommodates growth in ways that maintain and increase the social, economic, and environmental well-being of our communities by encouraging new development that results in more housing, transportation, and employment opportunities and choices for all.

What is Sprawl?

In contrast to smart growth, development patterns that public policies have encouraged since WWII encourage a spread out, disconnected mish mash of unwalkable subdivisions, shopping areas, and business parks that erode the traditional character of our communities and compromise public health by discouraging walking and polluting our air and water. In the process, we’re also saddling our communities and business with unnecessarily high costs to provide services and paving over some of our best farmland.

Advantages of Smart Communities

By using land efficiently, smart growth minimizes infrastructure development and maintenance costs for communities, as well as land development costs for developers. Sensitive use of land ensures water resources, prime agricultural land, habitat, and unique landscapes are conserved for future generations.

Smart growth reduces our dependence on the automobile by providing a range of transportation choices. Multi-modal transportation systems protect air quality, make communities more livable, create more affordable living situations, and curb future expenses on road construction and maintenance.

Smart growth eliminates incentives for sprawling development and promotes the long-term vitality and viability of neighborhoods. Smart growth communities include design elements with a local flavor that identify a unique sense of place for their residents.

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