1. I’m going to use this presentation to show what Smart Growth is--and what it’s not.
I’ll focus on what makes Smart Growth “smart.” I’ll illustrate how Smart Growth expands choices for families—choices in housing, choices in transportation, choices in how we invest our time and resources.
I’ll also talk about why making smarter development choices is so imperative now. The reasons have to do with our families’ health and well-being, the fiscal solvency and vitality of our communities, the quality of the environment, and social relations in our neighborhoods. [click]

2. Let’s Start With Definitions
Sprawl is irresponsible development that takes our tax dollars away from our community and destroys farmland and open space.
Smart Growth is well-planned development that keeps tax dollars in our communities and provides more choices for our families.
Let’s start with definitions of what Sprawl and Smart Growth are so we can be clear about what I’m talking about.
So what is Sprawl? [click]
Sprawl is irresponsible development that takes our tax dollars away from our community and destroys farmland and open space.
It affects us all – people living in urban, suburban, and rural communities.
And how is Sprawl different from Smart Growth? [click]
Smart Growth is well-planned development that keeps tax dollars in our communities and provides more choices for our families.
[click]

3. What Smart Growth “Is” And “Is Not”
More transportation choices and less traffic
Not against cars and roads
Vibrant cities, suburbs, and towns
Not anti-suburban
Wider variety of housing choices
Not about telling people where or how to live
But it is important to point out what Smart Growth “IS” and what it “IS NOT.” [click]
Smart Growth IS about more transportation choices and less traffic. It’s NOT against cars and roads. Cars are our dominant mode of transportation, and will remain dominant. Smart Growth is about more choices in how we get around. [click]
Smart Growth is about a variety of vibrant communities for families to choose among. It’s not anti- suburban. [click]
It’s about a variety of housing choices. It’s not about telling people where or how to live. Smart Growth provides more than just one kind of home--it gives people more choices, not fewer. [click]
Smart Growth is well-planned growth. It’s NOT against growth. [click] [click]
Well-planned growth that improves quality-of-life
Not against growth

4. Ten Principles Of Smart Growth:
Mix land uses
Take advantage of compact building design
Create a range of housing opportunities and choices
Create walkable neighborhoods
Foster distinctive, attractive communities with a strong sense of place
Preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty, and critical environmental areas
Strengthen and direct development towards existing communities
Provide a variety of transportation choices
Make development decisions predictable, fair, and cost effective
Encourage community and stakeholder collaboration in development decisions
These organizations have signed on to ten principles of Smart Growth. Notice principle number nine --“Make development decisions predictable, fair, and cost effective.”
Sprawl developments cost taxpayers big bucks, and these expenses are often unpredictable and out of control. If national, state, and local government policies did not encourage and subsidize sprawl, communities would have the chance to grow in very different ways than they have been growing.
It is time to change the sprawl subsidies and promote more well-planned developments that provide more choices for families.
Smart Growth is smart for taxpayers’ pocketbooks. [click]

5. Why Do So Many Families Care?
Environment
Air and water pollution are threatening human health
Economics
Transportation budgets are larger than food budgets
Equity
Families are finding fewer choices in housing styles, price ranges, and neighborhoods
Engagement
People have less and less time for involvement in their children’s schools or other civic activities
So, why do so many people care? It is because the current pattern of development, Sprawl Development, is not meeting the needs of families. [click]
Air and water pollution are threatening human health. For example, recent studies have suggested a greater link between tailpipe emissions and childhood asthma. And urban runoff is a major cause of water pollution. The U.S. EPA has identified urban runoff as the leading contributor to ocean shoreline pollution, and the third leading contributor to lake pollution. [click]
Transportation budgets are larger than food budgets. [click]
Families are finding fewer choices in housing styles, price ranges, and neighborhoods [click]
People have less and less time for involvement in their children’s schools or other civic activities. [click]

6. Why Does Smart Growth Work Better?
Causes less air and water pollution, and destroys fewer farms and open space
Environment
Succeeds economically and attracts businesses and a skilled workforce
Economy
Encourages more affordable housing and creates better choices in transportation and housing
Equity
Smart Growth works better because it finds a way to balance the 4- E’s--the Environment, the Economy, Equity, and Engagement. [click]
It consumes less land and water, causes less air and water pollution, and destroys fewer farms and open space. [click]
It succeeds economically and attracts businesses and a skilled work force. [click]
It encourages more affordable housing and creates better choices in transportation and housing. [click]
It encourages participation in civic life and supports healthier and more active residents of all ages. [click]
Encourages participation in civic life and supports healthier and more active residents of all ages
Engagement

7. Sprawl Vs. Smart Growth
Compare these two images. They contrast an image of Sprawl vs. an image of Smart Growth.
[click]
Why has the sprawl image so often prevailed in the last 50 years? Do free-market choices necessarily result in sprawl?
Hardly. Our post-World War II development patterns have been greatly influenced by local, state and federal government policies.
-- In fact, many of our favorite neighborhoods – main streets with apartments over shops, houses fronting close on the street with a corner store nearby – are literally illegal to build now because of local minimum lot size regulations, and prohibitions against mixing uses.
-- National policies have also played a role. The 1956 Interstate Highway Act; the federal mortgage financing program; and Urban Renewal, which often cleared away historic neighborhoods to make way for highways, parking lots, and poorly designed housing projects. Though the full consequences of these policies may have been unforeseen, they are no less real. [click]

8. Why Do People Prefer Smart Growth?
Sprawl Creates Traffic Congestion
And the sprawl experiment has another unanticipated consequence. By building communities where you can only get around by driving, we’ve discovered that every road we build is immediately overburdened. So we add more lanes…
But in the end, we learn that we lost more time in traffic during the construction process than we gained when the road opened. We cut the ribbon and discover that nothing really changed. People are still stuck in traffic without viable transportation choices.
Congestion is mostly a result of land use patterns, not a lack of road capacity. Over the past 50 years, we have forced the segregation of our homes, workplaces, shops and schools. Without changing this pattern of development, no amount of paving will relieve road congestion. [click]
(source: Texas Transportation Institute study of 68 largest metros)

9. We’re Driving Ourselves Crazy
Number of miles we drive
25% increase in last 10 years
Time we spend in traffic
236% increase since 1982
Money lost in time and fuel
$78 billion in 2000
Does anyone here have a pretty long commute to work? How long?
See whether this national data squares with your personal experience. [click] [click] [click]
The example of Atlanta, Georgia, affords a cautionary tale. From its north to its south, Atlanta grew 45 miles between 1992 and Atlantans now travel an average of 35 miles per day, the most in the U.S. Their traffic difficulties convinced Hewlett Packard to cancel plans for an additional office tower along the Atlanta beltway.

10. Soccer Moms Become Cab Driver Moms
Everything is a Drive Away
Suburban mothers spend 17 full days a year behind the wheel, more than the average parent spends dressing, bathing and feeding a child
Source: Surface Transportation Policy Project
School
Shops
Home
Perhaps the most telltale sign of sprawl is the lack of choices that families have around transportation. It turns a “soccer mom” into a “cab-driver mom”.
[click]
Irresponsible developments placed further and further out from established communities force us all to spend more and more hours in our cars, just to make it through our daily activities. It separates everything we do from everything else we do. [click]
Families start to take for granted that they must devote enormous parts of their days to just getting around. [click]
But total car-dependency just doesn’t make sense. Right now, one in three Americans is too old, too young, or too poor to drive a car. As the baby boom generation ages, the need for transportation alternatives will be even greater.
Recreation
Workplace

11. Why Do People Prefer Smarter Growth?
Smart Growth Provides More Transportation Choices
Smart Growth communities are providing more transportation choices for families. Communities are beginning to plan growth so that housing and businesses can locate near transit and the quality of transit can be improved. They are thinking about the transportation needs of school children, senior citizens, and people with disabilities. They are thinking about the needs of all kinds of different families -- those busy soccer moms. They have stopped. agreeing to accommodate sprawl, and the traffic congestion that irresponsible development produces. [click]

12. Why Do People Prefer Smart Growth?
Sprawl Provides
Few or No Options for Pedestrians and Cyclists
1. How many people in this room had a parent who walked to school as a child?
2. How many of you ever walked to school?
3. Leave your hands up if you have children between 5 and 15?
4. Now, leave your hands up if your children walk to school? (Note to speaker: typically 90% of hands are down by the end of the exercise. If not, you can say "Well, you folks are doing great then. And you're the exception because most people across the country no longer imagine their children walking to school.” – otherwise say…)
What you just saw in this room is true all across the country. Today, only about 10 percent of American children between ages 5 and 15 walk to school - a figure that has plummeted from more than 50 percent in the 1960s.
[click]

13. Why Do People Prefer Smart Growth?
Smart Growth Provides Safe Places to Walk, Bicycle and Tricycle
                                                                             
Smart growth communities provide safe and accessible places for neighbors to meet, as they allow their children to pedal their bikes and tricycles.
In walkable communities, neighbors are more likely to know each other. That benefits everyone from children to seniors. It’s good for promoting a sense of community, and good for security against crime because neighbors who know each other tend to look out for each other and each other’s children.
[click]

14. Why Do People Prefer Smart Growth?
Sprawl Destroys Farmland
Between , the U.S. lost an average of 45.7 acres of farmland per hour, every day. 4,000,000 acres in total!
Source: American Farmland Trust
Disappearing farms are becoming a new poster child for sprawl. Sprawl consumption of farmland will soon compete with our appetite for food.
From 1982 to 1992, we lost an average of 400,000 acres per year of prime farmland to urban and suburban development -- that’s 45.7 acres per hour, every single day.
What’s more, our most fertile farmland tends to be adjacent to metropolitan areas. That means farms get pushed to less fertile land, requiring more and more chemicals. Where does the runoff go? Chances are it winds up in a downstream water body. [click]

15. Why Do People Prefer Smart Growth?
Smart Growth Allows Farmers and Communities to Save Farmland
If we don’t change this course, farmers and farmlands will become part of history books and museums. Smart Growth allows farmers and communities to save farmland.
Remember we’re sacrificing farmland to development at a rate that far outstrips population growth. Many cities have actually lost population while expanding their developed land areas. Cities like this include Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis.
[click]

16. Why Do People Prefer Smart Growth?
Sprawl Consumes
Open Space
Cities across the country have found their favorite green spaces turned into housing developments. Recreation opportunities are diminished, views are lost, and wildlife is displaced. The paving of open space also contributes to flooding. [click]

17. Why Do People Prefer Smart Growth?
Smart Growth Creates Parks and Preserves Open Space
Smart Growth works to protect the quality of life for families.
Critics of smart growth like to say there’s plenty of open space in the U.S. – missing the obvious point that it’s difficult for people in Maryland, for example, to use open space in Kansas or Alaska.
[click]

18. Why Do People Prefer Smart Growth?
Roads
Utilities
Schools
25% less
15% less
5% less
Source: Economic and Fiscal Impacts of Alternative Land Use Patterns, by Robert Burchell,
Rutgers University
Smart Growth Costs Less
Here’s another graph to help illustrate my point that Smart Growth costs less. [click]

19. Why Do People Prefer Smart Growth?
In 1997, approximately 113 million people lived in counties that had unhealthy air quality
Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Sprawl Pollutes the Environment and Harms Public Health
It is sad but true that children--including very young children-- are often found carrying inhalers. School teachers no longer treat this as unusual for their students.
Learning to live with unhealthy air is not something that families should have to accept. We should expect clean air and clean water for our children, and for many generations to come.
To be healthy, our children need vigorous exercise, preferably out of doors. But in sprawling regions with high smog levels, outdoor sports can increase asthma attacks in children. [click]

20. Why Do People Prefer Smart Growth?
Smart Growth Protects the Health of People and the Environment
Smart Growth reduces some of the leading causes of air and water pollution. It places a value on protecting the environment and human health.

21. Why Do People Prefer Smart Growth?
Sprawl Takes Resources Away from Our Communities
As you can see, I’m not very fond of sprawl. I guess I’m also not very fond of the policies that support this costly way to grow. It has led to subsidized new communities that come at the cost of abandoned neighborhoods in many of our cities and older suburbs due to a lack of investments in existing infrastructure.
[click]

22. Smart Growth Achieves the Right Balance
Smart Growth Enhances
Our Communities
Doesn’t it make more sense to develop in existing communities? To spend resources wisely in already- established neighborhoods in urban, suburban, and rural areas? [click]
Smart Growth balances economic development against displacement and gentrification. [click]
It seeks a balance of income levels.
The Smart Growth process involves the whole community. [click]

23. More Families Are Choosing Smart Growth
Smart Growth is
on a Roll
Across the Nation
As I pointed out earlier, Smart Growth is “on a Roll” across the nation. More families are choosing Smart Growth for all the right reasons.
[click]