Question 1

EPA National Community Recognition Program

QUESTION 1

Our community has defined a mission and a goal for advancing smart growth principles.

Background

Defining your community’s smart growth goals begins with a clear understanding of smart growth principles. Smart growth is development that contributes to a cleaner and healthier environment, creates jobs and business opportunities to strengthen the economy, and expands a neighborhood’s housing and transportation options. A community that considers smart growth principles focuses on how and where their community can accommodate new development. A community should determine its smart growth goals at a local level based on the overarching tenants of smart growth principles, but below are a few examples of actions that can guide your community’s smart growth mission:

Accommodate pedestrians with walkable neighborhoods
Provide a variety of housing, commercial and retail uses in town centers
Preserve open space, farmlands, and areas of critical environmental importance
Focus on improving existing communities, not just developing new communities
Create neighborhoods with a distinct sense of place
Develop a range of transportation options
Focus on fair and cost effective development decisions
Encourage collaboration in your community on development decisions

Getting Started

Identifying a mission and goals within a community should begin with an inclusive process that incorporates concerned stakeholders. A clear sense of the principles of smart growth should be established, with focus then turning to the relevant application to your local community. The product of the process should be a written mission and/or goals
that are specific in scope, have measurable or quantifiable outcomes, and can be achieved within a realistic and definable time period, whether it be long-term or short-term.

Initiate the process by determining a clear sense of your community’s priorities and its vision for the future, then begin outlining the necessary goals and actions to make the vision a reality.

Internet Resources on Establishing Mission and Setting Goals

The Community Toolbox
An Overview of Strategic Planning
http://ctb.ku.edu/en/tablecontents/section_1085.htm

Appalachian Regional Commission
Practical Planning Models
http://www.arc.gov/program_areas/PracticalPlanningModels.asp

Local Government Commission
20 questions local leaders can ask their staffs relative to making their communities more livable, healthy and economically successful.
http://www.lgc.org/freepub/land_use/guidelines/20_questions.html

Envision Utah
Case study for successful regional visioning
http://www.envisionutah.org/introduction.phtml

Internet Resources on Advancing Smart Growth

State of Massachusetts
Smart Growth Toolkit
http://www.mass.gov/envir/smart_growth_toolkit/index.html

Smart Growth Online
About Smart Growth
http://www.smartgrowth.org/about/default.asp

The Orton Family Foundation
A variety of tools to aid Smart Growth Planning
http://www.smartgrowthtools.org/index.php

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