Smart Growth Principles

Smart growth is a broad term with a variety of applications and groups promoting its use, therefore the principles can vary, but often include:

• Anti-Sprawl: Smart growth encourages the renewal of existing communities and concentration of higher-density development in new communities. Smart growth grew out of a response to conventional post-WWII suburban developments with single-family tract housing, large yards, dead end streets and cul-de-sacs.
  
  
• Infill and Preservation: Smart growth proponents often encourage the adaptive reuse of buildings, and the revitalization of existing cities and towns. Many preservation groups have adopted Smart Growth, promoting it as a strategy to save historic structures and restore traditional community contexts.
  
  
• Mixed-Use Development: Smart growth encourages mixed-use development, similar to existing urban areas and small towns, including ground-floor retail with offices or housing above. Smart growth has become a tool to combine uses and curtail single-use development and zoning practices.
  
  
• Land and Resource Conservation: Smart growth has been adopted by a number of conservation and environmental organizations, looking to preserve farmland and natural resources. Land use regulation has been used for years to preserve open space in land trusts or through deed restrictions, or through such strategies such as the purchase or transfer of development rights.
  
  
• Walking, Bicycling and Transit: Smart Growth promotes walkable, centralized communities. This translates to easily walkable streets, facilities for bicycling, and transit connnections. Transit-oriented development focuses development around transit stations. Groups that promote mass transit have adopted Smart Growth as a development concept that encourages accessibility and enhanced transit use.
  
  
• Affordable/Work Force Housing: Successful smart growth development includes a variety of housing types, affordable at a variety of income levels. The opportunity for everyone who works in a community to also live there is an important element of building diverse, vibrant places. A number of municipalities across the region have implemented inclusionary zoning policies, with developer incentives, to promote or require mixed-income housing.
  
  
• Community Design/Public Process: Smart Growth promotes the concept of community design-a comprehensive strategy focusing development on neighborhood livability and quality of life. In order for Smart Growth strategies to be successful, they must have buy-in from the public and the development community-implemented through a hands-on public process or charrette.