Smart Growth Around America

When the federal government created an $8 billion pool of stimulus funds for worthy high speed rail projects, few anticipated how eagerly states would vie for the money. California alone submitted 42 applications for a total of $1.1 billion dollars in federal money.

Smart Growth America CEO Geoff Anderson spoke to WNYC public radio after this Monday’s application deadline about what the application process, what the money can buy, and what high speed rail can do for the United States. Here are some excerpts:

Tweet Too often, communities are built with housing meant to serve only one segment of the population. People have different housing needs as young adults than they do as part of a family, or as empty-nesters. And as our population skews older and older, we need to ensure our communities can accommodate older Americans. EPA [...]

At Streetsblog Captiol Hill, Elana Schor’s “Crunching June Stimulus Numbers: Roads Create Pricier Jobs Than Transit” confirms, so far, the predictions in SGA’s Spending the Stimulus: per dollar of investment, state road projects create fewer jobs than do state transit projects. The differences that she found are smaller than other studies have found, mostly, we suspect, because all the road project types are lumped together. Repair has long been found to produce more jobs than new roads.

Tweet We’ve said before that houses close to retail and jobs are good for public health, traffic congestion, and air quality. Aside from those worthwhile external benefits for everyone, people simply like living in walkable neighborhoods, within walking distance of the places they need to go. The massive popularity of Walk Score — the site [...]

Kaid Benfield is a Smart Growth America board member and the director of NRDC’s Smart Growth program. This post originally appeared on his NRDC Switchboard Blog. Our thanks to him for letting us run it in full here. -Ed.

I make no pretense of objectivity on this one. I’ve been working on LEED for Neighborhood Development for seven long years. It’s now finished and awaiting final approval by the three founding partners – NRDC (in consultation with the Smart Growth America coalition), the US Green Building Council, and the Congress for the New Urbanism.

During a recession, city officials often eye park budgets as an easy way to save money without cutting “essential” services. Yet even during the recession, voters supported green space and park ballot initiatives at far higher rates than most ballot initiatives. The 2008 election rounded up $7.3 billion in new spending for parks and open-space preservation, less than a month after the stock market crashed hard. What is it about parks that inspires this kind of public support? Most communities have few public, non-commercial spaces — except for parks. Believers in the “broken windows” theory will also say that upkeep in parks and other public spaces are important for community pride — and for keeping crime rates down.

Inner cities and rural areas can be full of areas known as “food deserts” — areas where fresh food is hard to come by. Large supermarkets choose not to locate in these areas because of higher security costs, creating a food equivalent of old housing redlining practices, leaving whole neighborhoods or communities without decent access to fresh food. Residents either have to make do with unhealthy convenience stores or fast food, or spend precious time and money traveling to other towns or sections of the city for each trip for food.

Tweet Ever wish you could see your words on this blog? Smart Growth America is seeking an excellent candidate to serve as a Communications Associate. In addition to other responsibilities, the Associate will work with our Communications Director and other members of the communications team to produce materials for print and web — including organizational [...]

Tweet Smart Growth America (SGA) is seeking an excellent candidate to serve as a Federal Policy Fellow. The Fellow will work with Smart Growth America’s federal policy team and coalition partners to engage and educate Congress and the Administration on the benefits of smart growth principles. Applications are due by Monday, August 17th. Responsibilities will [...]

Tweet In addition to keeping up with Smart Growth America right here on the blog, you can now get news, action alerts, and other announcements — all in 160 characters or less. If you already have a twitter account, follow us @smartgrowthUSA.