Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development Bill Moves to Senate Floor [UPDATE]

UPDATE OCT. 31, 2011: No amendments were offered to cut funding for the Partnership for Sustainable Communities programs at either the Department of Housing and Urban Development or the Department of Transportation. The Senate is back from recess this week and is expected to vote on passage.

The following was originally posted on October 13, 2011:

The Senate begins consideration this week of three annual appropriations bills. With the 2012 fiscal year already underway and only one of the twelve appropriations bills approved so far, funding for the Agriculture, Rural Development, and Food and Drug Administration; Commerce, Justice, and Science; and Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development (THUD) bills will be taken up as a package. The federal government is currently operating on a temporary spending measure that expires on November 18th.

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Philadelphia: More than just good cheese steaks


Philadelphia’s Girard Avenue, by Flickr user KGradinger.

Philadelphia has given us some of the world’s best cheese steaks, but the city also offers a great example of how smart growth strategies can help rebuild America’s cities.

Philadelphia’s smart growth efforts date back to 1991, when, beginning in his first term, Mayor Ed Rendell focused on revitalizing downtown. In 2001, Mayor John Street unveiled his Neighborhood Transformation Initiative that invested millions of dollars into neighborhood revitalization. And the City’s current mayor, Michael Nutter, is continuing this legacy by targeting the commercial corridors that provide goods, services and jobs to the City’s residents through the ReStore program.

These are great smart growth strategies that are revitalizing Philadelphia’s urban core and creating opportunities in underserved communities, and the efforts are beginning to pay off. For the first time in six decades, the City of Philadelphia has stopped losing population – and may be even growing. The 2010 U.S Census showed that Philadelphia’s population, which has decreased every decade since 1950, has stabilized.

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Transit Campaign Planner provides guidance for public transportation advocates

Legislators on both sides of the aisle agree that public transportation systems provide many benefits to the communities they serve, and ballot measures across the country this year have revealed strong public support for public transportation. For communities interested in bringing services like these to their area, a focused, organized transit campaign can make all the difference.

Transit Campaign Planning: A strategy template for organizers (PDF) is intended to help advocates interested in supporting public transportation do so more effectively. Originally published in 2009 and updated for 2011, this campaign template provides strategy guidance and suggestions for organizations large and small interested in establishing local and state-based funding streams for transit.

The template encourages advocates to answer questions familiar to any seasoned campaigner, with guidelines for doing a situation analysis, defining specific goals and objectives, identifying important decision-makers, laying out strategies and creating a campaign structure. Ultimately, this template is meant to help advocates create an original campaign plan that responds to the priorities, needs and interests of their community.

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"Brownfields Redevelopment, Community Revitalization, and Regional Planning: Making It Work Together" webinar materials now available

Thank you to everyone who attended SGA’s Sustainable Communities Network “Brownfields Redevelopment, Community Revitalization, and Regional Planning: Making It Work Together” earlier this week.

We heard from Adhir Kackar and Stacy Swartwood of the Environmental Protection Agency on how the federal government is working to streamline investments in community brownfield redevelopment and regional planning efforts, particularly through the federal Partnership for Sustainable Communities. We then heard the stories and lessons learned from the community of Ranson, West Virginia already working on brownfield cleanup in conjunction with other economic development projects from Dawn Seeburger, Environmental Resources & Consulting.

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Telling the stories of great places

Advocates for smart growth tend to talk a lot about urban planning, street design, and a whole host of technical information related to building towns and cities. But many of the people whose opinions matter most in local decisions don’t think about their communities this way, and this is something we all need to learn from.

Smart growth strategies create interesting, exciting places to live and work, and the people who live in those places benefit most from this. At this year’s Rail~volution conference, which concluded earlier this week in Washington, DC, I heard dozens of people tell stories of the town or neighborhood they love and how smart growth strategies have helped make it even better.

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Upcoming Webinar: Brownfields Redevelopment, Community Revitalization, and Regional Planning: Making It Work Together

Join us Tuesday, October 25th at 4:00 PM ET for the next Sustainable Communities Network webinar: “Brownfields Redevelopment, Community Revitalization, and Regional Planning: Making It Work Together.” This event is hosted by Smart Growth America and NALGEP.

We will hear from the Environmental Protection Agency on how the federal government is working to streamline investments in community brownfield redevelopment and regional planning efforts, particularly through the federal Partnership for Sustainable Communities. We then will hear the stories and lessons learned from a community in West Virginia already working on brownfield cleanup in conjunction with other economic development projects.

Speakers include Adhir Kackar and Stacy Swartwood from the EPA; and Dawn Seeburger, Environmental Resources & Consulting who is currently working on brownfields issues in Ranson.

What: “Brownfields Redevelopment, Community Revitalization, and Regional Planning: Making It Work Together”
When: Tuesday, October 25th, 2011 at 4:00 PM ET
Where: Webinar information will be sent to registrants
RSVP: Click here to register
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New report from Transportation for America ranks deficient bridges by metro areas

Crossposted from Transportation for America, a campaign of Smart Growth America.

A new look at structurally deficient bridges in metropolitan areas finds that just a quarter of U.S. bridges, located in our largest metropolitan areas, carry 75 percent of all traffic crossing a deficient bridge each day.

On the heels of the sudden closure of a major commuting bridge in Louisville, KY, a new report shows that more than 18,000 of the nation’s busiest bridges, clustered in the nation’s metro areas, are rated as “structurally deficient,” according to this new report from Transportation for America.

In Los Angeles, for example, an average 396 drivers cross a deficient bridge every second, the study found. The Fix We’re In For: The State of Our Nation’s Busiest Bridges, ranks 102 metro areas in three population categories based on the percentage of deficient bridges.

The report found that Pittsburgh, PA had the highest percentage of deficient bridges (30.4 percent) for a metro area with a population of over 2 million (and overall). Oklahoma City, OK (19.8 percent) topped the chart for metro areas between 1-2 million, as did Tulsa, OK (27.5 percent) for metro areas between 500,000-1 million.

At the other end of the spectrum, the metro areas that had the smallest percentage of deficient bridges are: Orlando, FL (0.60 percent) for the largest metro areas; Las Vegas (0.20 percent) for mid-sized metro areas; and Fort Myers, FL (0.30 percent) for smaller metro areas.

“There are more deficient bridges in our metropolitan areas than there are McDonald’s restaurants in the entire country,” said James Corless, director of Transportation for America, 18,239 versus roughly 14,000 McDonald’s. “These metropolitan-area bridges are most costly and difficult to fix, but they also are the most urgent, because they carry such a large share of the nation’s people and goods.”

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Tell Us Your Complete Streets Stories

The National Complete Streets Coalition is working to address concerns and misconceptions of Complete Streets, and we need your help. We believe the best arguments come straight from real-life stories, and we’ve developed several points based on what we’ve gathered so far. But we need more of them.

Complete Streets