What is smart growth?
Smart growth is an approach to community design that connects housing, transportation, and land use to create healthy, prosperous, and resilient neighborhoods.
About us
Smart Growth America cultivates vibrant, sustainable communities with diverse living and transportation options, enhancing quality of life for all.
Our work
Smart Growth America cultivates vibrant, sustainable communities with diverse living and transportation options, enhancing quality of life for all.
Explore Our Signature Reports
Impact
Smart Growth America cultivates vibrant, sustainable communities with diverse living and transportation options, enhancing quality of life for all.
Events
Throughout the year, we host a number of in-person and virtual events covering topics related to public health, social equity, and climate resilience.
Focus Areas
Housing and development
Our approach to building communities aims to create more affordable housing options, invest in thriving downtowns, and increase access to jobs and opportunity.
The current rules limit what you can build and where you can build it. We’re working to change that.
Access to affordable housing is fundamental to a healthy and inclusive community. Yet across the country, housing is increasingly out of reach for too many people. Outdated zoning, exclusionary development patterns, and rising costs have left communities struggling to meet demand—especially for affordable, resilient, and well-located homes.
Why smart growth is the right strategy for housing and development
Smart growth addresses the root causes of our housing challenges by focusing on where and how we build. It enables more diverse, attainable housing options—like duplexes, townhomes, and apartments—in walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods close to jobs, schools, and transit.
Zoning reform is essential to this work. Many zoning codes still reflect outdated ideas that restrict housing types, limit supply, drive up costs, and reinforce patterns of racial and economic segregation. Modernizing these codes can unlock opportunity, reduce emissions, and make communities more inclusive and resilient in the face of climate and economic shifts.
How we lead
Smart Growth America helps local leaders, advocates, and developers in large metro areas and small towns reshape the rules to meet today’s housing needs—and plan for tomorrow’s. Smart Growth America leads two programs that advance zoning reforms and bring together smart growth developers:
- The Center for Zoning Solutions is SGA’s home for the zoning reform movement. We work alongside communities to update their local land use regulations to allow for more housing in the right places.
- LOCUS brings together purpose-driven investors and partners to advance and affect smart growth policy and outcomes at the federal, state, and local levels.
Our housing and development work
Foot Traffic Ahead
Zoned In: Economic Benefits & Shared Prosperity with Form-Based Codes
Unrealized Gains: Opportunity Zones and Small Businesses
Westside Working Group Recommendations: Equitable Zoning Reform and Affordable Housing in MA
Aligned for Affordability: A Roadmap for Local Government Policy and Practice in Northwest Arkansas
By Smart Growth America • April 30, 2025
News & Insights
By Toccarra Nicole • January 13, 2025
News & Insights
By Smart Growth America • April 30, 2025
News & Insights
By Toccarra Nicole • January 13, 2025
News & Insights
Increasing access to walkable places
Despite reporting to the contrary, our signature report, Foot Traffic Ahead, finds just the opposite: the city endures, and across most metros, grew walkable urbanism.
The report also provides policymakers with recommendations on how to increase both the supply of and access to equitable, walkable urban development while safeguarding affordability and providing benefits such as improving community health, lowering emissions by reducing car use, and advancing equity by bringing access to economic opportunity.
Programs and coalitions
Smart Growth America programs and coalitions advance land use reforms to help create healthy, prosperous, and resilient communities:
The Center for Zoning Solutions is reimagining zoning laws to make the dream community a reality, one code at a time.
LOCUS advocates for real estate policies that are as economically viable as they are socially responsible and environmentally sound.
The National Brownfields Coalition is leading the charge to transform Brownfields into viable community assets.
Get the latest news from our programs and coalitions in your inbox!
Advocacy
Help us shape the future of sustainable and equitable communities. Be an advocate for smart growth policies for healthy, prosperous, and resilient neighborhoods. Act now!
Join the Movement
Support policies and initiatives that promote smart growth, equitable development, and access to affordable housing.
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Livable places. Healthy people. Shared prosperity.
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