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The Smart Growth Roundtable is made up of leaders from state, regional, and local organizations across the country focused on pioneering smart growth strategies.
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Smart Growth Roundtable

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About the Smart Growth Roundtable

Roundtable Members

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The Smart Growth Roundtable brings together leaders from state, regional, and local smart growth organizations to advance the movement toward more healthy, prosperous, and resilient communities. At our monthly meetings, members exchange insights on their current initiatives—whether expanding attainable housing, advancing safe and accessible transportation networks, strengthening climate resilience, or supporting rural communities. Together, members share strategies for overcoming challenges, align their efforts across federal, state, and local levels, and collaborate to advance smart growth principles nationwide. As the convener, Smart Growth America contributes federal insights relevant to these shared priorities.

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<ul>
	<li>Develop a unified strategy to advance smart growth principles across the country.</li>
	<li>Align federal, state, and local advocacy efforts to drive policy changes and sustainable development.</li>
	<li>Share best practices and innovations to support the smart growth movement.</li>
	<li>Foster collaboration among leaders to address common challenges in advancing smart growth.</li>
	<li>Drive impactful action through coordinated initiatives that promote equitable, sustainable communities.</li>
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Are you a state, regional, or local smart growth organization and want to join our coalition of non-profit leaders?

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At Smart Growth America, our various programs and coalitions work collaboratively to shape communities where people thrive. Through research, advocacy, and hands-on support, our network of advocates, decision-makers, and field experts work together to advance policies and practices that help communities become more healthy, prosperous, and resilient.

Our Work

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The National Complete Streets Coalition is the go-to collective for human-centered urban design, making streets safe and accessible for everyone.

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The Center for Zoning Solutions is reimagining zoning laws to make the dream community a reality, one code at a time.

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The National Brownfields Coalition is leading the charge to transform Brownfields into viable community assets.

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The Arts &amp; Culture Program breathes creativity into the Smart Growth movement, sparking revolutionary change within and outside SGA and beyond.

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The Smart Growth Network is a national alliance of organizations that brings together advocates, practitioners, policy makers, and local leaders working towards a shared vision for land use and infrastructure policies and actions that result in healthy, sustainable, equitable, and prosperous communities for all.

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Smart Growth America cultivates vibrant, sustainable communities with diverse living and transportation options, enhancing quality of life for all.
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Even the best-planned cities have a few hidden alleys.

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Many communities across the U.S. are looking for ways to boost housing production in response to the national housing crisis. But building housing on everything everywhere, including on federal lands, would not provide the housing people need to thrive. Continuing to sprawl into agricultural and natural lands means decimating more ecosystems. Instead, communities should prioritize zoning reform to boost housing production in the right places—within existing neighborhoods and near jobs, schools, parks, and services—while protecting agricultural and natural lands.
<h3>Sprawl: What it is and why it happens</h3>
As a national housing shortage drives up costs for Americans around the country, federal elected officials have proposed selling <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/12/climate/senate-gop-public-land-sale.html">millions of acres</a> of public lands to free them up for the building of housing. While communities across the U.S. must build more housing to start addressing the severe housing crisis, most of these public lands are remote from existing homes and jobs, far from the services and opportunities that people rely on to thrive. As a result, this strategy will likely have <a href="https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/knowledge-hub/news/opening-up-federal-lands-unlikely-to-move-the-needle-on-housing/">little effect</a> on housing affordability. But worse, opening up federal lands for housing would be doubling down on urban sprawl and the paving over of agricultural and natural lands.
Urban sprawl, the continued encroachment of single-family subdivisions, strip malls, and other low-density development on previously undeveloped land, has significant negative results for people and places. Sprawling development <a href="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/EndangeredBySprawl.pdf">destroys habitat for wildlife</a>, destabilizing local ecosystems, posing a threat to imperiled species, and reducing the ability of our natural lands to absorb carbon, mitigate floods, and combat urban heat. It also separates people from the everyday places they need—grocery stores, doctors’ offices, schools, and parks—forcing long commutes and car dependency. Developing agricultural and natural lands also limits people’s access to green space (which <a href="https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/knowledge-hub/news/health-equity-and-the-built-environment/">impacts public health</a>), hurts local food systems (<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0042098019841540">creating food deserts</a>), and <a href="https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/knowledge-hub/news/care-about-climate-take-a-look-at-your-communitys-zoning/">promotes emissions-heavy</a> lifestyles that significantly contribute to climate change.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-107593" src="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/2930205760_8b7376c33e_o-1024x768.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="768" srcset="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/2930205760_8b7376c33e_o-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/2930205760_8b7376c33e_o-300x225.jpg 300w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/2930205760_8b7376c33e_o-768x576.jpg 768w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/2930205760_8b7376c33e_o-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/2930205760_8b7376c33e_o-2048x1536.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
Unfortunately, sprawl has been the status quo model of development for many U.S. communities for decades, starting with the invention of American suburbia with Levitttown in the 1960s. According to the <a href="https://www.mrlc.gov/">National Land Cover Database</a>, the 11-county Atlanta region, which consisted of only 33 percent developed land in 1985, is now 57 percent developed due to the loss of nearly 800 square miles of natural and agricultural lands. In Maricopa County, home to Phoenix (the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/12/us/phoenix-census-fastest-growing-city.html">nation’s fastest growing large city</a>), the percentage of developed land has doubled to 14 percent. And the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, which has lost population since 1985, has still seen 200 square miles of natural and agricultural lands lost to sprawl.
One of the main reasons sprawl has become so commonplace, despite its widespread impacts, is zoning regulations. Many communities have largely limited new housing development to detached single-family homes on large lots through their zoning codes, blocking missing middle housing like duplexes or townhomes (whether by outright prohibiting them or by requiring additional regulatory barriers), and limiting larger multifamily buildings on large swaths of land. But since detached single-family homes require a larger footprint of land per household, cities have expanded outwards to house the same (or lower) amount of people. 
[alert type=&#8221;info&#8221;] The <a href="https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/programs-and-coalitions/center-for-zoning-solutions/">Center for Zoning Solutions</a> (CZS), a program of Smart Growth America, supports communities to advance policies to encourage mixed-use development, location efficiency, and diverse housing options. CZS provides technical assistance to local and state governments and community-based organizations to develop and implement zoning solutions, publishes reports, articles, and research and hosts educational webinars on zoning reform, and leads federal and state advocacy on these issues. [/alert]
Sprawl, while widespread, is not inevitable. Communities can take action to reform their zoning codes, directing new homes to the right places: vacant lots near downtowns, surface parking lots that sit empty most of the time, and walkable neighborhoods that already have infrastructure and services in place. And in doing so, communities can help protect farms and forests while also making a dent in the housing shortage that has driven housing costs so high.
Communities have a wide variety of zoning tools at their disposal to combat sprawl. This can include:
<ul>
<li>Adopting a zoning text amendment that allows different housing types, such as missing middle housing, by-right in more residential zones, including single-family only zones</li>
<li>Prioritizing housing over parking by allowing infill development on surface parking lots and by reducing excessive parking minimums, which <a href="https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/knowledge-hub/news/parking-minimums-are-a-barrier-to-housing-development/">constrain housing development</a> (or even replacing them with parking maximums)</li>
<li>Adopting an Equitable Transit-Oriented Development ordinance, which uses public transit infrastructure as a catalyst for new housing development while minimizing displacement</li>
<li>Adopting a form-based code, which regulates development by its form, rather than its use (i.e. residential, commercial, etc.)</li>
<li>Reining in excessive development standards, like minimum lot sizes, setbacks, and density restrictions, which hamstring compact housing development and promote further sprawl</li>
</ul>
Communities that open up more of their residential land to allow the building of many different types of housing, not just detached single-family homes on large lots, can house more people in vibrant, close-knit neighborhoods near jobs, schools, and amenities. This helps reduce car dependency, shortens commutes, and ensures homes are located out of harm’s way from extreme weather events. Without reforms like these, sprawl is likely to continue—despite the impacts to local ecosystems, public health, and climate change. Local governments must take action to address these issues, advancing zoning reform for more environmentally friendly and people-centered communities.

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Week Without Driving challenges people to go one week without driving to learn firsthand about the barriers people face outside of a car. Taking the bus, walking and biking, or paying for rideshare shows the hidden costs of car-centric infrastructure, which Week Without Driving shines a light on. The 2025 challenge takes place September 29 to October 5.
SGA’s new blog series on examining our built environment shows how you can use walk audits, bike audits, and accessibility audits as tools to keep advocating for these necessary changes, during Week Without Driving and beyond. In communities across the U.S., our streets and transit systems are designed first and foremost for cars—not people. That design choice has consequences: sidewalks are broken or missing, curb ramps are absent, and bus stops are often nothing more than a pole on the side of a busy road with no safe way to reach them. For millions, these aren’t small inconveniences—they’re barriers that cut off access to jobs, healthcare, education, and community. People with disabilities, <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/disability-and-health/articles-documents/disability-impacts-all-of-us-infographic.html">who make up nearly 29 percent of the U.S. population,</a> are especially impacted. The consequences are severe: adults with disabilities are <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/disabl.nr0.htm">twice as likely</a> to be unemployed, more than <a href="https://www.rwjf.org/en/insights/our-research/2023/04/more-than-one-in-five-adults-with-limited-public-transit-access-forgo-healthcare-because-of-transportation-barriers.html">three times as likely to miss out on healthcare</a> due to transportation barriers, and report chronic loneliness and isolation at <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7403030/">over four times the rate of their non-disabled peers.</a>
But this isn’t just a disability issue. Parents pushing strollers, older adults, children walking to school, people recovering from injuries, bicyclists, or even travelers with luggage all benefit from safe, accessible streets. When we prioritize accessibility, we create healthier and more connected communities for everyone.
<h3>What accessibility audits are and why they matter</h3>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-107555" src="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/IMG_5691-Edited-1-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/IMG_5691-Edited-1-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/IMG_5691-Edited-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/IMG_5691-Edited-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/IMG_5691-Edited-1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/IMG_5691-Edited-1-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
A critical tool for solving this problem are accessibility audits—tours of a community that evaluate how well streets, sidewalks, intersections, and transit work for people of all abilities.
Accessibility audits are more than checking ADA compliance boxes. They reveal whether infrastructure is actually usable for real people. Can someone cross a street in the time allowed by the signal? Can a wheelchair user reach a bus stop? Are curb ramps placed where people actually need them?
The core of a good accessibility audit is understanding that experience is expertise. People with disabilities have to be central participants alongside planners, engineers, and advocates. Successful accessibility audits catch problems early, inform priorities, and make sure public investments are serving everyone.
In March 2025, Smart Growth America hosted an “Accessibility is for Everyone” walking/rolling tour in Washington, DC. During the tour, participants visited a few locations:
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Chinatown Metro station, where they explored the importance of reliable signage, elevator access, and station navigation.
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Foggy Bottom neighborhood, where discussions focused on dangerous intersections, crossing signals, and bus stops.
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The Park at CityCenter, where the group wrapped up the tour by reflecting on all the barriers and solutions they observed, and what insights they gained to bring into their own communities.
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To guide the experience, participants used an “iSpy list” where they could check off notable features like curb ramps, signage, working or broken elevators and users who are impacted by accessibility including seniors, kids, parents with strollers, and people with mobility aids. It also provided blank space for the group members to jot down their observations during the tour.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-107556" src="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/IMG_5875-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/IMG_5875-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/IMG_5875-300x200.jpg 300w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/IMG_5875-768x512.jpg 768w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/IMG_5875-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/IMG_5875-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
The tour guides shared their experience and expertise at each stop which allowed participants to gain insights grounded in lived experience. Powerful moments also came from conversations that happened organically throughout the tour. As the group walked together, participants began pointing out things they noticed, sharing personal stories, and realizing how many barriers our current infrastructure creates. During the tour, the group only used elevators and routes that were accessible to everyone in the group. An out of service elevator forced the group to take an alternate route, which brought something into sharp focus for everyone—a major cost of inaccessibility is something invaluable and irreplaceable: time.
This tour looked a little different from a typical accessibility audit. Instead of focusing on one project site, it brought together people from all over the country. But the impact was the same: folks started noticing barriers they hadn’t seen before and left with ideas for how to fix them.
<h3>What makes an accessibility audit successful</h3>
An effective accessibility audit has a few key ingredients:
<ul>
<li>Prioritization: Conduct audits early in the design process so that accessibility isn’t an afterthought, and to avoid expensive fixes down the line.</li>
<li>Perspective: Recruit a diverse group of participants, especially people with disabilities, to bring a range of perspectives and lived experiences.</li>
<li>Engagement: Keep participants engaged with tools like checklists, maps, or even the “iSpy” approach that SGA used in DC. Download the <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nd_oPoIsnGU-DQZV1USz2XzV7tnEEL8poY0hUlr2lqY/edit?usp=sharing">SGA Accessibility Audit iSpy List</a> or check out these <a href="https://www.aarp.org/livable-communities/getting-around/aarp-walk-audit-worksheets-english.html">downloadable worksheets from AARP’s Walk Audit Tool Kit.</a></li>
<li>Connection &amp; Action: Follow up with surveys, publish the findings, and use the results to inform priorities. Be transparent about what steps will be taken to implement what was learned from the audit to create accountability and build/strengthen trust.</li>
</ul>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-107559" src="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/walk-audit-chinatown-1024x682.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="682" srcset="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/walk-audit-chinatown-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/walk-audit-chinatown-300x200.jpg 300w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/walk-audit-chinatown-768x512.jpg 768w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/walk-audit-chinatown-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/walk-audit-chinatown.jpg 1600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
Sometimes accessibility improvements are framed as something that only benefits people with disabilities—but that’s not true. Curb ramps, audible signals, and benches help parents pushing strollers, seniors, kids, travelers hauling luggage, and many others. We need to stop seeing accessibility as a special accommodation and start understanding it for what it is—an essential part of <a href="https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/ped_bike/univdesign/">creating convenient, usable transportation systems.</a>
Accessibility audits are an essential tool that provide invaluable insights and direction. By making them a routine part of planning and street design, communities can create streets that truly work for everyone.
Learn more about participating in Week Without Driving at weekwithoutdriving.org.

Accessibility audits are essential for building better streets

walk audit 2

Week Without Driving challenges people to go one week without driving to learn firsthand about the barriers people face outside of a car. Taking the bus, walking and biking, or paying for rideshare shows the hidden costs of car-centric infrastructure, which Week Without Driving shines a light on. The 2025 challenge takes place September 29 to October 5.
SGA’s new blog series on examining our built environment shows how you can use walk audits, bike audits, and accessibility audits as tools to keep advocating for these necessary changes, during Week Without Driving and beyond.
Nothing quite beats a walk outside, so it’s not surprising a walk audit is such a useful tool in advocating for change in your community. A walk audit is an organized site visit, where community members, city staff, elected officials, and others walk through an area in need of change together. The group can discuss safety, access, and comfort challenges at the site, including what the participants feel themselves, what they observe of others, and what community members share about their everyday experiences. A walk audit can also be used as a data collection strategy, to record the conditions at a site that may not be obvious, or even available, from existing digital records.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Walk Audit Training in San Diego" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jJPweTEwR90?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<h3>Many benefits of walking together</h3>
Bringing people together to walk through these challenges, to experience them first-hand, can have lasting benefits, particularly when community members and decision-makers are in conversation together. Organizing a walk through an area in need of pedestrian improvements can give people:
<ul>
<li>On-the-ground perspective: The way our existing infrastructure prioritizes cars may be hard to see from behind the windshield or from looking at a map, but walking on a narrow sidewalk next to a fast lane can quickly reveal the street’s inadequacies. The walk can turn data into a tangible experience for participants: it’s one thing to know on paper that a neighborhood is hotter than others on average, but it’s a completely different thing to stand together at an uncovered bus stop at mid-day.</li>
<li>Insight into the barriers others face: Even someone who regularly walks is limited to their own experience outside of a car. Inviting people with diverse needs, such as parents with young children, people who are blind, and people who use mobility aids, can spark conversations about the different ways we move around and what we need to do so comfortably.</li>
<li>Understanding of how design and policy decisions impact people’s day-to-day: Particularly for decision-makers like transportation engineers and elected officials, a walk audit can reveal the consequences of past and ongoing design choices. A standard lane width, neighborhood speed limit, or distance between crosswalks is easy to question when you’re walking together along a busy corridor.</li>
<li>Connections and partnerships needed to address these issues: Most importantly, bringing people together for the walk audit can help identify allies, activate champions, and bring more people on board with your goals to improve safety. This work can’t be done alone, and inviting necessary partners to a walk audit can jumpstart the conversations that turn into action and change.</li>
</ul>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-107481" src="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/walk-audit-2-1024x768.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="768" srcset="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/walk-audit-2-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/walk-audit-2-300x225.jpg 300w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/walk-audit-2-768x576.jpg 768w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/walk-audit-2-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/walk-audit-2.jpg 1600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
<h3>Walk audits in action</h3>
In Harrisonburg, VA and Winchester, KY, walk audits brought together a wide range of partners to have important conversations about safety challenges and more. These were organized as part of the process to design and install <a href="https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/programs-and-coalitions/national-complete-streets-coalition/quick-build-demonstration-projects/">quick-build demonstration projects,</a> to bring everyone to the project site before designing a project and observe the conditions on the ground, building a shared understanding of the safety, access, and comfort challenges for people walking and biking.
<h4>Harrisonburg, VA</h4>
A walk audit on Mason Street was part of an <a href="https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/knowledge-center/reconnecting-harrisonburg-va/">effort to reconnect the community</a> across this wide arterial. It was attended by city staff, community members, local business owners, and elected officials, all part of the quick build team. We also saw how quiet the road was at mid-day and though we had talked about the lack of green space, feeling the heat from the sun and the asphalt strongly reinforced the community’s need for shade. An unexpected conversation happened at a parking lot next to the street: the city staff, elected official, and local business owner had all been thinking about how to activate the underutilized space, but hadn’t yet connected on the issue. Walking the site together gave them a place to start the conversation to reimagine more than just the street in question, but the nearby opportunities as well. 
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-107480" src="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/walk-audit-3-1024x684.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="684" srcset="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/walk-audit-3-1024x684.jpg 1024w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/walk-audit-3-300x200.jpg 300w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/walk-audit-3-768x513.jpg 768w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/walk-audit-3.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
<h4>Winchester, KY</h4>
A walk audit on Boone Ave/KY-627, a state-owned route, was part of the <a href="https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/knowledge-hub/resources/kentucky-complete-streets-leadership-academy/">process to build partnerships between the city and the state transportation cabinet.</a> The walk brought city staff, nearby residents, school officials, state transportation staff, and regional partners together to see the challenges of the site. With high speeds and heavy traffic, particularly trucks cutting through, the need for traffic calming measures was clear. One participant from the state observed that this corridor looked okay from maps on the computer, but when walking it was easy to tell that the posted speed limit was just too fast. This walk audit helped strengthen relationships between people who work in different departments and build momentum for future community engagement, to get even wider input on the challenges of the corridor.
<h4>Getting started</h4>
There are many resources available to organize your own walk audit. Start with identifying your goals, target routes, and essential partners to send invitations and schedule a time. Make sure to hold some time before the walk audit, to set the stage, and after, to reflect on what everyone observed. Depending on your goals, data collection methods like AARP’s <a href="https://www.aarp.org/livable-communities/getting-around/aarp-walk-audit-worksheets-english/">Walk Audit Worksheets</a> and <a href="https://survey123.arcgis.com/">Survey123</a> from ArcGIS can help you collect the information you’re looking for. Use these toolkits from <a href="https://www.aarp.org/livable-communities/getting-around/aarp-walk-audit-tool-kit.html">AARP</a>, <a href="https://www.saferoutespartnership.org/sites/default/files/walk_audit_toolkit_2018.pdf">Safe Routes Partnership,</a> and <a href="https://www.aceee.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/aceee_walk_audit_toolkit.pdf">ACEEE</a> to get started. And be sure to share your experiences to inspire others to conduct a walk audit themselves!
Learn more about participating in Week Without Driving at weekwithoutdriving.org/
&nbsp;

walkability audit

Week Without Driving

How walk audits help create a safer built environment

Niagara_Case_Study_Image2

Join the National Brownfields Coalition for a <a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_RfXy12bfS5OICpdPJUvoyQ">webinar</a> on September 30 at 2 p.m. ET for a conversation on how to build and maintain partnerships to advance brownfield remediation and support equitable community development.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-107540" src="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Brownfields-Partnerships-Webinar-1024x576.png" alt="" width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Brownfields-Partnerships-Webinar-1024x576.png 1024w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Brownfields-Partnerships-Webinar-300x169.png 300w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Brownfields-Partnerships-Webinar-768x432.png 768w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Brownfields-Partnerships-Webinar-1536x864.png 1536w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Brownfields-Partnerships-Webinar.png 1600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
Brownfields are more than vacant lots or abandoned industrial sites—they represent untapped potential for housing, green space, jobs, and economic development. Yet redeveloping these sites requires overcoming environmental, financial, and social challenges that no single sector can solve alone. Partnerships are key to ensuring cleanup efforts not only restore land but also deliver long-term benefits for communities, especially those historically overburdened by pollution and disinvestment.
During this session, hear case studies from Christa Stoneham, Chief Executive Officer at Houston Land Bank, Chris Gdak, Brownfields &amp; Community Revitalization Practice Leader with, Montrose Environmental Group, and Matthew Popkin, founder of the Brightfields Accelerator Program at RMI. Together, they’ll share strategies for strengthening cross-sector collaboration and explore new approaches to equitable redevelopment.
[alert type=&#8221;info&#8221;] <a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_RfXy12bfS5OICpdPJUvoyQ">Register here!</a> [/alert]
The <a href="https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/programs-and-coalitions/national-brownfields-coalition/">National Brownfields Coalition</a> is a non-partisan alliance of practitioners dedicated to ensuring that all brownfields are responsibly cleaned up and redeveloped to support the health, prosperity, and resilience of communities nationwide.

Webinars

Upcoming webinar: Partnerships for brownfield redevelopment

DC_Middle_Housing (1)

A smart growth approach to housing aims to build more homes in the right places at the right price so that everyone can live in a community that supports them at every stage of life.
For too long, housing has sprawled out, become astronomically expensive, and offered little choice in the types of places we can call home. That’s no accident! Our rules, policies, and choices have created today’s housing crisis. <a href="https://www.uschamber.com/economy/the-state-of-housing-in-america">We’re short 4.7 million homes,</a> and across the country, housing is increasingly out of reach for too many people.
At Smart Growth America, we focus on the big picture because transportation, land use, and economic development don’t just happen on their own. A bad decision in one area can ripple into the others, creating problems that can last decades. When we get it right, smart growth brings it all together, allowing people to live in their communities at any stage of life, connect conveniently to jobs, schools, and daily needs, and build community alongside one another.
Smart growth is also key to unlocking more housing where people want to live. To that end, we’ve long worked in the housing space, helping towns and cities rethink zoning, reinvest in underused land, and support developers to create a range of housing options. That experience has shown us what works and what holds communities back. From supporting communities on the ground to advising policymakers and producing timely research, we are pushing for solutions that will actually deliver more housing, in the right places, at the right price.
Smart Growth America works to tackle the root causes of our housing challenges by focusing on three things: the types of homes available, where they’re built, and how much they cost. This approach enables more options—like duplexes, townhomes, and apartments—in walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods close to jobs, schools, and transit.
<h3>Our focus: Type, place, and price</h3>
By focusing on type, place, and price, we can:
<ul>
<li>Eliminate outdated rules that make it nearly impossible to build anything but single-family homes on large lots. (Type)</li>
<li>Build homes for people of different incomes, household sizes, and stages in life (Price)</li>
<li>Help local leaders understand that building on the edges drives up costs and doesn’t meet demand for where people actually want to live. (Place)</li>
</ul>
<h4>Type</h4>
When many people think of home, an image of a white picket fence comes to mind, but many other types of housing would work better for more people throughout the different stages of their lives than just a single-family home. Zoning laws have made it hard to build anything else in most neighborhoods, limiting choices and who can live where. To solve the housing crisis, we need a broader mix of housing options that meet the needs of diverse households and strengthen local economies.
That means regulating for what we want: infill development, transit-oriented development, missing middle housing, revising single-family-only zoning, form-based codes, accessory dwelling units (ADUs), and building capacity for small-scale developers.
<h4>Place</h4>
Many small and mid-sized cities think they are built out or “full,” but a closer look reveals empty lots near downtowns, restrictive zoning that blocks duplexes or townhomes, and parking lots that sit empty most of the time. We need to build in the right places to support vibrant, close-knit communities. New homes should be located close to jobs, schools, doctors’ offices, parks, and the amenities that meet our daily needs. Building close to services also unlocks the opportunity for more density, which is vital as the U.S. faces its worst housing crisis in decades. Homes should also be in locations out of harm’s way from extreme weather events.
That means prioritizing infill development, redeveloping publicly owned land, reusing brownfields, and focusing on locations that are safe from climate hazards.
<h4>Price</h4>
High housing costs are partly about the number of homes we’re building, but also about the costs to build them. Construction market volatility and regulatory barriers contribute to increased housing costs. To build more homes in the right places, we need a wider range of financing tools for developers and predictability and speed in the process. And alongside new housing, we need strong anti-displacement strategies to help people and businesses stay in their communities.
The right tools can make a big difference in what is built. That means expanding tax credits, loan programs, and incentives to invest in well-connected locations, and leveraging innovative approaches like community land trusts.
<h3>How we lead this work</h3>
To build more homes in the right places at the right price, Smart Growth America works with national, state, and local leaders, advocates, and developers in large metro areas and small towns to build capacity, align resources, and reshape the rules to meet today’s housing needs and plan for a better future.
Our tactics include:
<ul>
<li>Reforming outdated rules. Zoning reform is essential. Many zoning codes 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 housing supply, provide more options, and make communities more inclusive and resilient.</li>
<li>Rethinking land availability. Instead of building on farmland or green space, why not reuse underutilized land in existing communities? Parking lots, vacant parcels, formerly contaminated land, and other overlooked sites are already connected to where people want to be—and redeveloping them is a smarter fiscal choice for local governments.</li>
<li>Identifying new and improving existing financing tools. Many types of housing don’t pencil out under current cost and funding structures, which can push new homes to the fringes. Through federal advocacy and real-world examples from developers, we’re advancing strategies that make more types of housing feasible in smart growth locations. This can include both proposing new financing approaches that could simplify complex capital stacks and better aligning existing federal programs with smart growth goals.</li>
</ul>
<h3 class="wp-block-spacer" style="height: 20px;" aria-hidden="true">Closing</h3>
The housing crisis didn’t happen overnight, and it won’t be solved with a single policy. But its effects are felt in our daily lives, shaping where we grow, how we connect, and the communities we build together. Smart Growth America’s work is about expanding those choices for more people in more places.
Stay tuned as we dig deeper into our past work and our ideas on where to go next.

The smart growth approach: more homes in the right places, at the right price

yimby

Robert Showah’s recent <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/09/01/construction-housing-affordability-yimby-zoning/">op-ed</a> in the Washington Post announcing the impending demise of YIMBYism due to a supposedly “self-curing” American housing shortage reads less like analysis and more like a Victorian doctor declaring the patient healed with just some fresh air while the fever still rages. His argument leans on a simplistic narrative that demographic shifts, the death of baby boomers, and more construction in outlying areas will solve everything. In doing so, he badly misdiagnoses the real ailment: regulations stifling the kind of development many Americans want to see, which has the potential to make a dent in the current housing crisis.
First, the claim that declining marriage rates reduce demand is textbook backwards. As average household sizes shrink, the same population requires more homes, not fewer. One married couple in a three-bedroom house becomes two single adults in two one-bedrooms, or two studios. Fewer marriages mean more households, and more households mean more demand for precisely the smaller, nimbler homes that exclusionary zoning often forbids.
More on this demographic misread: Mr. Showah notes that declining birth rates may eventually lead to lower housing demand, but when, and where? Pinning demand-side hopes on there being fewer babies far down the road does nothing for a family facing pricing pressure today or even in the next twenty years. Further, dismissing seniors as inconveniently propping up demand today, only to release housing upon their death, fully minimizes the fact that seniors today want and benefit from walkable settings and smaller units as they downsize, <a href="https://www.aarp.org/livable-communities/">according to AARP.</a> Lastly, he assumes younger heirs will want to live in, or buy, the homes that boomers release in auto-oriented suburbs, but their demand for walkability is palpable.
Mr. Showah appears to sneer at walkable urbanism as though it were some boutique preference and not, in fact, popular. Our <a href="https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/knowledge-center/foot-traffic-ahead-2023/">Foot Traffic Ahead</a> report, which I co-authored with Christopher Leinberger, finds that Americans pay hefty premiums to live in walkable places: around 37 percent for a rental apartment. And yes, that includes places that he believes might be too hot for anyone to walk, like Los Angeles and Atlanta. The National Association of Realtors <a href="https://www.nar.realtor/commercial/create/survey-americans-prefer-walkable-communities">now shows that</a> a majority of Gen Z and Millennial adults entering and in their prime homebuying years prefer walkable, connected homes to larger, car-dependent homes. This marks a turning point.
These facts are not ideology; they are basic urban economics and market demand. To suggest otherwise is like insisting that nobody wants to see Taylor Swift live, while stadiums sell out in minutes, because more people have listened to her on streaming. He mistakes numbers for preference.
Third, Mr. Showah gets his bugaboo of regulation exactly backwards. There is no nefarious urbanism agency requiring you to develop your home into a duplex by fiat. Smart growth priorities simply want to make certain housing choices legal for the market to provide; auto-centric priorities, like Mr. Showah’s, seek to personally enlist the state’s police powers to protect his aesthetic and low-density preferences from a free market that might do otherwise in some locations. The true regulatory stranglehold he should concern himself with is in the byzantine zoning codes that restrict options, stymie developers, and impose upon everyone the sprawling, auto-oriented suburbs he romanticizes. Decades of exclusionary zoning, minimum lot sizes, and parking mandates were designed to wall out working-class families and people of color, as Richard Rothstein so eloquently showed in <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/the-color-of-law-a-forgotten-history-of-how-our-government-segregated-america/">The Color of Law.</a> That legacy isn’t YIMBYism but the “onerous regulation” that keeps housing scarce where people most want to live.
And let’s talk costs. Cars are not cheap luxuries; they are forced necessities in places where transit, biking, and walking are artificially suppressed. The Center for Neighborhood Technology’s <a href="https://htaindex.cnt.org/">H+T Index</a> shows how the combined burden of housing and transportation makes supposedly “affordable” metros like Houston more expensive for modest-income families than parts of New York or D.C. A $2,000 mortgage loses its luster when you’re spending another <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/10/07/business/car-ownership-costs.html">$2,000 a month to keep two cars running.</a> The system in auto-oriented areas requires a person to finance and upkeep a five-figure machine as the entry price for participating in society. We would prefer that households have other transportation options to meet their daily economic and social needs.
To be sure, zoning reform alone will not solve the housing crisis. Funding for affordable housing, strong tenant protections, infrastructure investment, and smarter transportation planning all matter. Construction labor shortages, material costs, and federal financing rules also play real roles. But zoning is the keystone: without legal permission to build the types of homes and neighborhoods people increasingly want, the rest of those efforts can only go so far.
In short, the problem is not that YIMBY or smart growth reformers are asking for too much, and the solution isn’t to just wait it out for miraculous self-healing. The problem is that for too long, America has built too little of what people demonstrably want: housing in connected, inclusive, walkable communities. Writing off that demand as a passing fad dismisses the 21st century in favor of the mid-20th and often for bad rather than good. The housing crisis will not “disappear on its own.” It will be solved by undoing the very policies that Mr. Showah wants to preserve—the ones that prevent our neighborhoods from evolving, our communities from welcoming, and our markets from responding to reality.
YIMBY isn’t dying. It’s just getting started.
Dr. Michael Rodriguez is research director at Smart Growth America.

affordable housing

YIMBY isn’t dead. It’s the future

DVRPC

The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC), the metropolitan planning organization serving five and a half million people residing in greater Philadelphia and southern New Jersey, has a lengthy, if sporadic, history of weaving arts and culture into its planning. Through its participation in the Culture and Community Network (CCN), DVRPC is working to shift from one-off initiatives toward a more intentional, sustained integration of arts and culture. With flexibility to focus its CCN-related work in Trenton, DVRPC has been experimenting with new ways to engage communities, test creative tools, and strengthen internal readiness.
<figure id="attachment_107395" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-107395" style="width: 1024px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-107395 size-large" src="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/DVRPC-1024x682.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="682" srcset="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/DVRPC-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/DVRPC-300x200.jpg 300w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/DVRPC-768x512.jpg 768w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/DVRPC-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/DVRPC.jpg 1600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-107395" class="wp-caption-text">DVRPC team working together on their group pitch at the Seattle convening of the Culture and Community Network in June 2025.</figcaption></figure>
<div class="wp-block-spacer" style="height: 20px;" aria-hidden="true"> </div>
DVRPC staff view the Culture and Community Network as a timely and strategic opportunity to rethink how planning connects with people. Rather than treating arts and culture as an add-on, they wanted to explore how creative approaches could make engagement more authentic, responsive, and community-driven. From public participation to active transportation, DVRPC’s team is experimenting with new ways to move beyond business-as-usual—and bring fresh perspectives into regional planning. &#8220;If we keep doing the same thing, we’ll get the same outcome,&#8221; said Transportation Planner Jen Farris.
<h3>Early arts and culture milestones</h3>
Over the past decade, DVRPC has explored how arts and culture can strengthen planning, moving from one-off initiatives to a more integrated approach:
<ul>
<li>
Exploring ideas: Foundational reports like Demographic Trends and Forecasts in the Philadelphia Region (2008) and Spirit of Place (2023) examined how shifting demographics, culture, and creativity can reshape communities and drive economic vitality.
</li>
<li>
Showcasing best practices: In 2012, a Regional Community and Economic Forum featured Mural Arts Philadelphia and county-level projects, elevating arts and culture as essential to community and economic development.
</li>
<li>
Testing in the field: Creative demonstrations such as The Expo: Experimental Pop-Ups (2018) and Getting to Green: Routes to Roots (2024) piloted artistic storytelling, interactive installations, and station art to promote safety, celebrate cultural heritage, and connect residents to green spaces.
</li>
</ul>
Together, these efforts laid the groundwork for DVRPC’s current participation in the Culture and Community Network, where the agency is moving from experimental projects to a more intentional, consistent process of creativity across its planning practice.
Some of DVRPC’s current and ongoing efforts include:
<ul>
<li>Trenton Partnerships: Collaborated with Artworks Trenton and a local cycling group, letting partners lead with their expertise. Feedback revealed frustration with temporary street murals, pushing DVRPC to consider and implement more durable, meaningful strategies they’ve been exploring in CCN.</li>
<li>Creative Meeting Tools: Used scale models and matchbox cars to explain street design changes in Trenton—an approach described as joyful, silly, and effective at sparking conversation.</li>
<li>Art in Planning Workshop: A new initiative, designed by Lillian Drake, Public Participation Planner, around ideas learned through CCN, to showcase staff creativity while inviting outside artists to connect with DVRPC and planning partners.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Safe Streets for All Committee in Trenton: Jen is embedding creative engagement methods into this new body tasked with creating a public participation plan.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Critical challenges</h3>
Even with growing interest, DVRPC staff face barriers. Staff emphasized that while encouragement to pursue creative work is helpful, what they really need is clarity and organizational support to integrate arts into planning efforts. Many also noted the challenge of aligning creative practices with the defined scopes and timelines of existing projects, which can make experimentation feel risky or impractical. And even when past arts initiatives were successful, they often lacked the structures to sustain lessons learned and build momentum over time.
Despite these ongoing challenges, an internal survey recently conducted in connection with the team’s participation in CCN revealed strong potential for risk-taking and interest in trying new things, prompting an opportune moment for continued growth.
<h3>Lesson learned</h3>
Participation in the Culture and Community Network has helped DVRPC step back, reflect, and experiment with greater intention. The team has seen the value of planting seeds for future innovation, identifying both “easy wins” and longer-term shifts that can make creative approaches stick. They’ve also emphasized the importance of setting clear goals, documenting processes to build trust, and showcasing the arts and culture work already underway both to inspire internal support and to share lessons across the region.
<h3>Looking ahead</h3>
DVRPC is beginning to translate these lessons from CCN into organizational change. The team is preparing specific, fundable project ideas for inclusion in DVRPC’s FY2027 work program, ensuring arts and culture isn’t just a side project but embedded in the agency’s core activities.
Smart Growth America’s role as convener and facilitator has been essential in this journey. CCN has given DVRPC the space to reflect, connect with peer MPOs, and test new ideas. More than just inspiration, SGA’s support has helped DVRPC legitimize and boost its efforts internally, building the permission and structure needed to make creativity part of planning and engagement at every step.
[alert type=&#8221;info&#8221;] Smart Growth America’s Culture and Community Network ensures MPOs don’t have to take on this work alone. By connecting peers, offering tailored support, and amplifying local efforts, the network helps MPOs bring arts and culture into planning in ways that inspire action and strengthen communities. <a href="https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/programs-and-coalitions/arts-and-culture/culture-community-network/">Learn more about CCN &gt;&gt;</a>  [/alert]

Culture and Community Network

How DVRPC is building momentum and sustainability for arts and culture in planning

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Smart Growth America’s Culture and Community Network (CCN) worked with Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) across the country to experiment with and integrate arts and culture into their planning and engagement work. In practice, this might mean using creative methods such as theater-based tools, partnering with social practice artists, or gathering oral histories to deepen engagement, expand on who participates in planning, and connect lived experiences to policy decisions.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-107348 size-large alignnone" src="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Kazoo-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Kazoo-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Kazoo-300x200.jpg 300w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Kazoo-768x512.jpg 768w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Kazoo-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Kazoo-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
MPOs and regional planning agencies, sometimes housed in the same organization, play a pivotal but often behind-the-scenes role in shaping how communities grow. They are responsible for coordinating transportation and land use planning across cities, counties, and towns within a region and serving as conduits for federal funds, ideally helping decide where investments go, which projects move forward, and how policies align across jurisdictions. Their decisions affect everything from daily commutes to climate resilience, making them a critical point of influence for advancing equity and community-centered planning. Because MPOs set priorities that shape long-term investments, they are uniquely positioned to use arts and culture not just to improve engagement, but to reimagine how planning is done at a regional scale.
Our new case studies showcase both the promise and the challenges of this emerging field and how MPOs, with support from SGA, are learning from one another, testing new approaches, and finding creative ways to connect with their communities.
[button type=&#8221;info&#8221; block=&#8221;true&#8221; size=&#8221;lg&#8221; link=&#8221;https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/programs-and-coalitions/arts-and-culture/culture-community-network/&#8221;]Read the case studies! [/button]
Each profile in this series offers a different vantage point on what it takes to bring arts and culture into regional planning. For example, PlanRVA, the MPO for the Richmond, Virginia, region, is just beginning its journey, with staff from nontraditional planning backgrounds experimenting with creative approaches to engagement. R1 Planning Council and Grand Valley Metropolitan Council also show how MPOs can begin integrating arts and culture into planning, even with limited experience or capacity. The Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), on the other hand, has been supporting arts and culture activities consistently for over ten years but faces the challenge of institutionalizing and sustainably funding its work. The profile of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission-Association of Bay Area Governments (MTC-ABAG), which serves the San Francisco Bay Area in northern California, explores the tension between ambitious equity-focused programs and organizational capacity. Other MPOs in the network are exploring ways to use art in placemaking, rethinking youth engagement, and building partnerships with cultural organizations.
Taken together, these stories reflect the breadth of the Culture and Community Network, from MPOs that are just getting started, to those seeking to refine and sustain established programs. These case studies are part of a larger effort: later this year, Smart Growth America will publish a Blueprint that compiles the approaches, lessons learned, and big takeaways from the Culture and Community Network. This resource is designed to help agency staff transform institutional norms and practices through creative, cultural approaches to equitable community engagement. The Blueprint will provide guidance for staff navigating barriers, seeking to shift culture from within and looking for catalysts for longer-term change.
These case studies and the Blueprint show the breadth of what’s possible: how creative approaches can spark new conversations, center underrepresented communities, and shift how planning is done. They also show the value of a national network where MPO staff can share ideas, compare challenges, and receive support from Smart Growth America as they take on this work. Whether you’re at an MPO and curious about arts and culture integration, an artist or cultural worker keen to be involved in regional planning, or a funder interested in supporting more equitable, creative community building, these stories and the forthcoming Blueprint offer a practical guide for what’s possible when arts and culture become part of planning and engagement at a regional scale.
[alert type=&#8221;info&#8221;] Smart Growth America’s Culture and Community Network ensures MPOs don’t have to take on this work alone. By connecting peers, offering tailored support, and amplifying local efforts, the network helps MPOs bring arts and culture into planning in ways that inspire action and strengthen communities. <a href="https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/programs-and-coalitions/arts-and-culture/culture-community-network/">Learn more about CCN &gt;&gt;</a>  [/alert]

How arts and culture are transforming regional planning and MPOs: Stories from the Culture and Community Network

IMG_6806

PlanRVA, the metropolitan planning organization (MPO) for the Richmond, Virginia area, joined the Culture and Community Network (CCN) as part of its effort to initiate creative approaches to community-centered engagement. PlanRVA, with a jurisdiction covering nine localities and over a million residents, represents an MPO at the early stages of integrating arts and culture into its planning processes. Through its participation in CCN, PlanRVA is exploring how creative strategies can help make infrastructure and transportation planning more accessible, culturally sensitive, and responsive to community needs.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-107304" src="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/IMG_6806-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/IMG_6806-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/IMG_6806-300x200.jpg 300w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/IMG_6806-768x512.jpg 768w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/IMG_6806-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/IMG_6806-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
PlanRVA’s engagement efforts are led by staff whose backgrounds are from outside the traditional transportation or planning pipelines. Their nontraditional, nonlinear routes to PlanRVA have created space and opportunity for creativity, empathy, and new modes of engagement. 
Kristin Hott, PlanRVA’s engagement coordinator, has a background in grassroots organizing and the arts. She draws on creative practices as a bridge between individual stories and collective community identity. For example, Kristin pursues quilt-making as both a personal and communal practice: after personal tragedy, quilting became a way to process grief while building connections with others. She views community quilts as a metaphor and tool for planning work, stitching together diverse experiences into a cohesive whole.
Grants specialist Emily Williams also brings a unique background to regional planning as a former higher education instructor and union organizer. She has a keen interest in embedding inclusive engagement into the structure of funded projects, ensuring that public input is not an afterthought but part of the process from the beginning. Her approach emphasizes that proposals should not just deliver infrastructure but also create opportunities for authentic community participation.
Both Kristin and Emily were drawn to CCN because of their shared desire to expand community engagement beyond conventional public meetings and comment periods. Importantly, their executive director encouraged their participation, seeing the network as an opportunity to learn from peer organizations and bring fresh approaches to the region. For Kristin and Emily, CCN offered a chance to connect their creative instincts with practical strategies for regional planning.
<h3>Arts and culture and engagement efforts</h3>
Some of the key efforts PlanRVA implemented in partnership with Smart Growth America and the Culture and Community Network include:  
1. Building internal readiness. Recognizing that staff buy-in is critical, PlanRVA conducted an internal survey to gauge comfort with integrating arts and culture into planning. Rather than rely on a conventional questionnaire, the team created a short video to encourage participation and explain the purpose of the survey, an example of how even internal processes can benefit from creativity.
2. Creative Connecting @ Civic Engagement Innovation Lab. In the summer of 2024, PlanRVA hosted a collaborative workshop focused on using arts and culture-based research to improve community engagement. The event brought together professionals from various sectors, including artists and community organizers, to share creative strategies and build new alliances for more equitable and sustainable regional planning.
3. 2025 Pathways to the Future Regional Symposium. On March 14, the agency hosted PlanRVA Day, using creative activities such as maps and sticker-based exercises to help residents better understand infrastructure planning. The event demonstrated that even small, playful interventions can demystify complex planning processes.
4. Zero Fare Transit project. Emily played a key role in a campaign to maintain fare-free transit service after the COVID-19 pandemic. Partnering with the local transit agency, she helped frame a narrative that highlighted the benefits of zero-fare service for local businesses, workers, and the overall well-being of the community. Telling stories served as a key data point, in addition to quantitative data, in building support for maintaining the fare-free policy.
<h3>Challenges along the way</h3>
PlanRVA’s community engagement capacity has been constrained from the start. The original proposal envisioned a four-person team; in reality, Kristin was initially the sole staff member working on engagement. Limited staff capacity continues to shape how much creativity can be operationalized.
The team has wrestled with questions such as, “Are we doing this to communities, or with them?” This distinction highlights the challenge of balancing creativity with feasibility, ensuring that creative practices are participatory and co-created, not imposed.
<h3>Lessons learned</h3>
Participation in Smart Growth America’s Culture and Community Network provided valuable space for reflection and connection. Both Kristin and Emily cited the importance of imagination and creativity in reaching marginalized or underrepresented groups, as well as the need for culturally sensitive practices. Kristin emphasized the role of external artistic resources in sparking new ideas. Both also identified tribal engagement as an area of growth, underscoring their awareness of communities that have historically been overlooked in planning conversations.
Kristin and Emily emphasized that everyone is an artist in some way, and that planning organizations should not hesitate to draw on creativity across their staff and communities. Creative engagement does not require professional artists; it requires openness, experimentation, and respect for community voice.
<h3>Looking ahead</h3>
Although PlanRVA is still in the early stages of its arts and culture journey, it has already piloted innovative approaches that distinguish it from many peer MPOs. Free of some of the institutional baggage that can weigh down larger agencies, PlanRVA is experimenting with new ways of connecting planning to community life. Smart Growth America’s Culture and Community Network has provided not only practical examples but also inspiration, reinforcing that imagination has a place in planning. As the team continues to grow, PlanRVA is poised to evolve into a more creative and community-centered MPO.
[alert type=&#8221;info&#8221;] Smart Growth America’s Culture and Community Network ensures MPOs don’t have to take on this work alone. By connecting peers, offering tailored support, and amplifying local efforts, the network helps MPOs bring arts and culture into planning in ways that inspire action and strengthen communities. <a href="https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/programs-and-coalitions/arts-and-culture/culture-community-network/">Learn more about CCN &gt;&gt;</a>  [/alert]

How Plan RVA is building a foundation for arts and culture work

r1 and GVMC

Smart Growth America launched the Culture and Community Network (CCN) to provide MPOs with tailored support, peer exchange, and a creative container to explore how arts and culture can strengthen planning practice. Two participants in the cohort used this opportunity to begin their journey of incorporating arts and culture into their planning processes.
<figure id="attachment_107398" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-107398" style="width: 1024px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-107398" src="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/r1-and-GVMC-1024x682.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="682" srcset="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/r1-and-GVMC-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/r1-and-GVMC-300x200.jpg 300w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/r1-and-GVMC-768x512.jpg 768w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/r1-and-GVMC-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/r1-and-GVMC.jpg 1600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-107398" class="wp-caption-text">Andrea Faber, Transportation Planner and Clean Air Action Program Coordinator, Grand Valley Metropolitan Council (GVMC) at center in turquoise top speaking with Cassidy Boulan, Assistant Manager, Bicycle Programs, at the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC).</figcaption></figure>
<div class="wp-block-spacer" style="height: 20px;" aria-hidden="true"> </div>
When it comes to regional planning, integrating arts and culture into transportation and climate work is still a relatively new practice. For many metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), the question isn’t whether it matters, but rather where to begin, especially when staff capacity is stretched thin and prior arts and culture partnerships have been limited.
Two MPOs in this year’s CCN cohort, R1 Planning Council in Rockford, Illinois, and the Grand Valley Metropolitan Council (GVMC) in Grand Rapids, Michigan, are great examples of organizations taking their first steps with leveraging arts and culture to inspire change. With the right support and inspiration, they are finding ways to connect planning with creativity, build new partnerships, and start embedding arts and culture into their regional work.
<h3>R1 Planning Council: Building a living toolkit for public art</h3>
In Rockford, the R1 Planning Council has been exploring how to help communities across their region better connect arts and culture with public space. Through participation in the Culture and Community Network — and through office hours with Smart Growth America staff — the idea emerged to create a regional public art toolkit.
Rather than a one-time report, R1 envisions a living toolkit, a resource co-created with communities and continuously refreshed with new examples, ideas, and partnerships. It could begin with a workshop series in partnership with the local arts council and expand to include case studies, best practices, and even interactive tools like ArcGIS story maps.
The concept builds on past arts and culture documentation in the Rockford area, such as a regional architecture booklet produced nearly two decades ago. Now, with guidance and inspiration from Smart Growth America, R1 is reimagining that idea for today: a digital platform to showcase public art, architecture, and cultural spaces across the region, while encouraging new conversations about the role of arts in public life.
By participating in the Culture and Community Network, R1 has gained access to peer examples, hands-on technical support, and the encouragement to begin embedding arts and culture more intentionally in its regional planning practice.
<h3>Grand Valley Metropolitan Council: Building external relationships for community leadership in climate and art</h3>
In Grand Rapids, GVMC has been exploring the intersections of climate resilience, youth leadership, and creative expression. With support from Smart Growth America’s coaching and peer exchange, GVMC began collaborating with student groups who are eager to play a role in shaping their community’s climate future. 
Together, they’ve been brainstorming creative ways to engage the public on climate issues, from murals and transportation advertising to poetry slams connected to the region’s climate action plan. GVMC is also exploring opportunities to connect with the City of Grand Rapids’ artist-in-residence program, opening the door to collaboration between local artists, young people, and the MPO’s environmental team. 
Like many MPOs, GVMC has limited staff capacity to launch new initiatives. But their participation in the Culture and Community Network has helped build momentum and direction.
<blockquote>
“I love the case studies and the other examples from other MPOs, because I feel like it’s hard to just start. But if you use other ideas as a springboard, it helps so much to get those creative juices flowing to see what others are doing.” -Andrea Faber, Transportation Planner
</blockquote>
Even in the early stages, GVMC is demonstrating how MPOs can establish new relationships with communities and groups outside the agency and bring new voices, especially youth, into planning, using creativity as a bridge between climate policy and public engagement.
This combination of structured support and peer exchange is helping MPOs build the foundation they need to bring arts and culture into planning, even with limited time and resources.
<h3>Looking ahead</h3>
The journeys of R1 and GVMC show that when MPOs have the right space and support, they can begin to weave arts and culture into transportation and climate planning in ways that strengthen community connection and expand public trust.
For Smart Growth America, the Culture and Community Network demonstrates that with the right conditions, MPOs of any size or stage can take meaningful steps toward more creative, equitable, and resilient planning.
[alert type=&#8221;info&#8221;] Smart Growth America’s Culture and Community Network ensures MPOs don’t have to take on this work alone. By connecting peers, offering tailored support, and amplifying local efforts, the network helps MPOs bring arts and culture into planning in ways that inspire action and strengthen communities. <a href="https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/programs-and-coalitions/arts-and-culture/culture-community-network/">Learn more about CCN &gt;&gt;</a>  [/alert]

Small steps, big shifts: How smaller MPOs are using arts and culture to spark change

paul-hanaoka-housing-california-redondo beach-unsplash

The ‘abundance’ movement is gaining momentum: it’s a big idea that calls for building more housing, more energy, and more infrastructure by getting rid of outdated and unnecessary red tape. Abundance is a great idea, and Smart Growth America is ready to offer our decades of experience and expertise, not only in seeking those same outcomes, but in demonstrating what it looks like when those big ideas are put into action.
Abundance is the idea this moment demands. For the first time in decades, bipartisan leaders are lining up behind the notion that we should allow growth and development that’s been stymied by over-regulation for generations. The momentum is real, and it’s long overdue. As experts in housing and the built environment, we share the abundance movement’s core belief: it’s time we tear down the outdated rules that make it nearly impossible to build in most neighborhoods— especially in the connected, opportunity-rich places where people actually want to live.
Addressing the <a href="https://mediaroom.realtor.com/2025-03-10-U-S-Housing-Market-Faces-4-Million-Home-Shortage-Realtor-com-R-Calls-on-Lawmakers-to-Let-America-Build?utm_source=chatgpt.com">urgent housing supply crisis</a> is extremely important, but we also know that focusing on supply alone isn’t enough. If we only chase ‘more,’ without asking where, what, and for who, we risk repeating the same mistakes without addressing the root cause of the current crisis. This approach could lead us to build large, expensive houses on the fringe where regulation is looser, but opportunity is farther away. At best, this will slightly lower the cost of housing for people of more modest means, but it will do little to build housing to the walkable, transit-served places near jobs, retail, and services that people want to live. And it will do nothing to address the regulatory barriers that have stymied efforts for decades to build the housing people need.
Abundance done well means putting in the hard work of removing barriers in the highest-impact places: thriving, well-connected communities where high prices keep everyone out but the select few. It means variety—duplexes, triplexes, mixed-use—so people at every stage of life can find a home that makes sense for them. By building the housing people want in the places they want them, we will also align housing with transportation, energy, and economic development, meaning people can spend less money and time on transportation and pollute less while doing so. This is the smart growth approach we’ve championed for more than 20 years.
<a href="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Abundance-smart-growth_Opportunitiest-and-alignment.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-107286 size-full" src="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Abundance-smart-growth_Opportunitiest-and-alignment.png" alt="" width="940" height="788" srcset="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Abundance-smart-growth_Opportunitiest-and-alignment.png 940w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Abundance-smart-growth_Opportunitiest-and-alignment-300x251.png 300w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Abundance-smart-growth_Opportunitiest-and-alignment-768x644.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 940px) 100vw, 940px" /></a>
<h1>Here are three ways abundance + smart growth can meet the moment</h1>
<h3>Abundance doesn’t dictate a direction—but up is better than out.</h3>
The housing crisis is hitting hardest in established, high-demand places. And that’s exactly where we need to add the types of homes people can no longer find or afford. That will mean building inside existing communities, filling empty or underutilized parcels, and sometimes building taller. Those places tend to have more amenities (transit, walkability, retail) and more opportunities (from jobs to education); but they also are the places with the greatest regulatory barriers, which means building there will involve a fight.
Right now, less than three percent of the land area in our nation’s 35 largest cities is walkable, but those are the areas that generate the most GDP and have the highest prices for potential residents, indicating that the housing market is far from meeting demand for walkable, vibrant places. The market will direct developers to build in places where people want to live, only if decision-makers can focus on reducing the barriers that stop it from happening.
Building where land is cheapest on the fringe of metro areas might look affordable on paper, but when families are forced to own multiple cars just to get to work, school, and basic services, the actual costs skyrocket. The cost of gas, insurance, and maintenance can wipe out any savings from cheaper rent or mortgages. In contrast, building housing in well-connected communities lets families choose whether they even need a car, decreasing travel times, reducing costs, and bringing <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Health/moving-walkable-city-add-1000-steps-day-study/story?id=124549709">health benefits</a>.
It is also <a href="https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/knowledge-hub/resources/rationale-model-fiscal-ordinance/">more expensive</a> to the government and the taxpayer. Building low-density requires the same investment in roads, water, sewer, trash, fire, schools, and police as denser development does. <a href="https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/knowledge-hub/resources/the-fiscal-implications-of-development-patterns-overview/">It just costs more per person</a>. This leads to higher taxes or unmaintained infrastructure and services, usually the latter. 
Development on the fringes is also more likely to be in areas that are vulnerable to extreme weather or necessitate high-cost infrastructure investments, and <a href="https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/knowledge-hub/resources/rationale-model-fiscal-ordinance/">the added tax revenue often can’t cover the long-term costs of infrastructure maintenance and services</a>. True affordability means looking at housing, transportation, and energy costs together—and dense, multifamily housing in connected areas almost always comes out ahead.
<h3>Abundance calls for changing the rules, but that matters most in the places where opportunity already exists.</h3>
<a href="https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/programs-and-coalitions/center-for-zoning-solutions/">Reforming zoning, construction, and environmental review processes is a goal we share.</a> That means taking on the fight to ensure we can add housing where it is most needed, which is not in the places where it is already easy to develop. People hear “build more housing,” but in most existing communities, the current laws and regulations are too hard to overcome. Still, we need to build more housing, right? Well, that mindset leads to more housing being built on the fringes. We need to do the hard work now to dismantle zoning barriers in the communities where demand is the highest, and not simply leave it to each local jurisdiction to do the work itself. Moreover, when we do build in new places, we need to make sure they do not simply adopt the standard land use and zoning approaches that have gotten us here.
And beyond just cutting the red tape, policymakers should find ways to “regulate for what you want,” proactively creating policies that allow for and incentivize housing in well-connected existing communities. Beyond zoning reform, communities often also require support in identifying and incentivizing the development of underutilized sites and building up infrastructure to support small-scale developers ready to create more dense and innovative types of housing. 
(Check out Jerusalem Demsas’s 2025 Smart Growth America Equity Summit Keynote, where she talks about this very goal.)
<h3>Abundance must actually build everything, not just single-family homes.</h3>
If all we do is churn out more single-family homes on big lots, we’re not solving the housing crisis—we’re cementing it. The real housing shortage is in “missing middle” housing: duplexes, triplexes, small apartments, and other modest-scale homes that outdated zoning has effectively banned in many communities across the country.
When these smaller options aren’t available, the math is simple: people who would live in them either get priced out of the housing market or get pushed into larger, more expensive homes, driving up prices for everyone else. One- and two-person households, low- and moderate-income families, young professionals, and older homeowners who want to downsize all lose out, and the small supply of smaller homes that does exist just gets more expensive due to scarcity. Meanwhile, some households, especially older Americans, remain stuck in larger homes that they may struggle to maintain.
This mismatch is stark: <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-households-in-the-us/">since 1960, the average household size in the U.S. has shrunk dramatically</a>, while the <a href="https://www.thezebra.com/resources/home/median-home-size-in-us/">houses we build have gotten bigger</a>.
<h2>Last word</h2>
Housing abundance without housing variety isn’t abundance at all. It’s just supply growth on paper that leaves the core mismatch in place and keeps affordability out of reach.
If abundance does the hard work of dismantling regulations in ways that allow more housing of all types in denser, well-connected, existing communities, we can meet housing demand where that demand is highest, lower household costs, and build vibrant communities that last. Outward growth will only lock in decades of traffic and higher costs. Abundant smart growth would deliver what Americans want.

Abundance

Housing

smart growth

Smart growth: The abundance we need

Transit-oriented-development-768x576

The federal government has two strong transit-oriented development financing programs, RRIF &amp; TIFIA, but both have been plagued by administrative burden for a decade. Smart Growth America’s LOCUS coalition believes that now is a key opportunity to improve government efficiency, strengthen public-private partnerships, and unlock economic growth through transit-oriented development.
Transit-oriented development (TOD) is a boon for transit systems and communities because it spurs economic growth, fosters walkable, connected neighborhoods, and shortens commute times for everyone by providing alternatives to personal vehicles. Critically, as transit systems across the country seek paths to financial stability, TOD offers a proven path to increased ridership. In addition, selling or leasing land to developers can generate additional revenue streams for local agencies. By concentrating economic activity, promoting efficient land use, improving access to transit, and expanding housing options, TOD can strengthen communities and the systems that serve them.
Despite the numerous benefits, the federal government has generally been an inconsistent partner for TOD, often bogged down in administrative burdens related to the fact that it can involve multiple federal agencies. By definition—and to great benefit—TOD is at the intersection of transportation and land use, which puts it at a crossroads of interdepartmental and intergovernmental collaboration. This overlap can also create process challenges and raise jurisdictional questions that lead to delays. Uncertainty over which entity should be doing which policy task, and whether they have the authority or funding to do so, has plagued TOD-related efforts due to the cross-agency, collaborative nature of the work.
Rather than supporting transit-oriented development broadly across programs and integrating TOD into transit programs, the approach pursued by Congress and various administrations has to date been much more limited. The Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) efforts to support joint development and value capture, as well as implement the Pilot Program for Transit-Oriented Development Planning, have all been meaningful. As are recent congressional efforts, like the <a href="https://blakemoore.house.gov/media/press-releases/reps-moore-peters-reintroduce-legislation-to-help-tackle-americas-housing-crisis-boost-public-transit-use">Build More Housing Near Transit Act,</a> which would provide a boost to a competitive transit grant application’s score if it incorporated pro-housing policy. However, Congress and the Administration must do more. Specifically, they must make clear that transit-oriented development is a priority, and they must unlock TOD financing through the Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing (RRIF) and the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) programs.
The RRIF and TIFIA programs are two federal financing programs that offer very low-interest direct loans and loan guarantees to finance the development of infrastructure and transit-oriented development projects. Eligible TOD projects must be within a half-mile walking distance of a qualifying station/facility. Between the two programs, eligible projects can include commercial development, residential development, public infrastructure projects, economic development projects that involve public infrastructure, and joint development. While the specific project requirements vary between RRIF and TIFIA, the general goal of TOD eligibility is to offer attractive loan terms for projects that support increased transit ridership. For more information on project eligibility and the program as it stands, visit the <a href="https://www.transportation.gov/buildamerica/TOD">Build America Bureau’s TOD-specific website.</a>
During the lead-up to the FAST Act in 2015, Smart Growth America’s <a href="https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/programs-and-coalitions/locus/">LOCUS</a> coalition took a leadership role in championing language that included transit-oriented development project eligibility. This language was incorporated into the FAST Act, passed by Congress, and signed into law. While securing TOD project eligibility was a significant win, implementing the provision has been challenging. Both the RRIF and TIFIA programs were not initially designed to finance TOD projects, but were instead originally authorized to provide financing for traditional infrastructure. This has posed a host of challenges as requirements that made sense for one type of project fail to map easily onto the other (like bond rating requirements and NEPA specifics). In fact, only <a href="https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/knowledge-hub/news/tifias-first-transit-oriented-development-loan-approval/">one TOD project has been successfully financed</a> using these programs to date, with a few more in the pipeline—not nearly enough to address the pressing need for more housing near transit across the country. With high interest rates hampering new housing development, this tool has enormous potential to unlock more well-located housing.
Over the past several years, LOCUS developers have continued to share their perspectives in conversations with the Department of Transportation and Congress in efforts to reform RRIF and TIFIA to allow both programs to better serve as financing tools for transit-oriented development. While there have been a number of improvements, including clarifying language around specific requirements for the financing and process adjustments that have streamlined the program, both RRIF and TIFIA still have issues that make them burdensome and less functional than intended for private sector developers.
To address these challenges, LOCUS recently provided input on draft legislation being considered in Congress and submitted a <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/177VcOXJB_yaddKpNjPJUaopP03T3JqQjZ8pmwllAeXo/edit?usp=sharing">comment letter</a> to USDOT on how RRIF and TIFIA might be reformed in the upcoming surface reauthorization bill. Specific recommendations include:
<ul>
<li>Extend the period that the programs can be used for TOD projects</li>
<li>Harmonize the definitions of what a transit-oriented development project is between programs for clarity</li>
<li>Consider exemptions in statute from NEPA, Davis-Bacon, and Buy America requirements for TOD projects, and clarify that TOD projects should not be required to appear on State Transportation Improvement Programs (STIPs)</li>
<li>Streamline the internal deliberation process within the federal government to shorten the overall loan processing timeline</li>
<li>Create a new, targeted, and more streamlined loan program for smaller TOD projects, which could be especially helpful in smaller communities and rural areas with existing downtowns or activity centers with demand for transit-oriented development</li>
</ul>
<div class="wp-block-spacer" style="height: 20px;" aria-hidden="true">In the upcoming surface transportation reauthorization bill, Congress and the Administration have a chance to provide clarity on TOD and present a vision that states clearly: the Department of Transportation can and should pursue transit-oriented development, not only because it supports transit systems, but because it facilitates economic growth and makes good fiscal sense. A critical way to achieve this is to pursue long-overdue legislative reforms to the RRIF and TIFIA programs. 
 </div>
&nbsp;

RRIF

TIFIA

Reforming transit-oriented development financing at the federal level to unlock housing and economic growth 

Advocacy

MardiGrasDrone2 (1)

Earlier this month, the Gulf Coast celebrated a long-awaited milestone nearly 20 years in the making: the return of passenger rail service between New Orleans and Mobile, AL. With brass bands, second lines, and Mardi Gras regalia, communities across Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama welcomed the launch of Amtrak’s new Mardi Gras route—marking the first time passenger trains have run this corridor since Hurricane Katrina.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Y&#039;all Aboard! Celebrating the launch of the Mardi Gras Service" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ocmYcriB7jM?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Smart Growth America’s transportation program, Transportation for America (T4America), has played a leading role in bringing passenger rail back to the Gulf Coast and creating programs to expand passenger rail across the country. What began as a regional vision grew into a national movement, with T4America lending policy expertise, navigating regulatory hurdles, convening stakeholders, and helping build a strong coalition of local leaders and residents committed to bringing trains back to the Gulf Coast.
Along the way, our team helped build new federal programs to fund the service, coordinated test rides to show feasibility, and built the public and political will to make passenger rail a reality. These efforts didn’t just lead to the restoration of Gulf Coast rail. They also helped pave the way for the creation of a federal rail program with the potential to expand passenger rail nationwide.
[button type=&#8221;info&#8221; block=&#8221;true&#8221; size=&#8221;lg&#8221; link=&#8221;https://t4america.org/gulf-coast-rail/&#8221;]See our timeline that breaks down how this decade-long effort came together! [/button] 
T4America Senior Policy Advisor John Robert Smith, along with other staff, was part of the inaugural train ride, joining local leaders, community members, and long-time advocates at every stop along the new route. From the second line sendoff in New Orleans to the joyful welcome in Mobile, members of the T4America team witnessed firsthand how much this service means to the people of the Gulf Coast—and just how powerful it is when federal policy and local voices come together to deliver real change.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-107211" src="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/IMG_7286-1024x768.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="768" srcset="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/IMG_7286-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/IMG_7286-300x225.jpg 300w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/IMG_7286-768x576.jpg 768w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/IMG_7286-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/IMG_7286-2048x1536.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
The Mardi Gras line is proof of what’s possible when communities organize, elected officials lead, and federal policy supports progress. The same programs and policies that made Gulf Coast rail restoration possible can, and should, be leveraged to expand passenger rail across the country.
To truly build a national passenger rail network, federal policy needs to go beyond one-off projects. That means sustained investment in rail infrastructure, a clearly coordinated national vision, and the authority to deliver service faster and more equitably. Transportation for America’s <a href="https://t4america.org/reauthorization/#policies">new policy proposal</a> lays out a path to make that vision real in the next federal transportation reauthorization. The Mardi Gras line is just the beginning. The future of American passenger rail is ready to leave the station.

Amtrak

Gulf Coast

Mardi Gras

Passenger rail

Two decades in the making: Passenger rail returns to the Gulf Coast

Transportation

Screenshot 2025-08-22 at 12.51.08 PM

On Thursday, July 24th, LOCUS and Smart Growth America hosted the third webinar in the “Building the Stack” series. This series of conversations with real estate developers and community partners focuses on demystifying how to finance and build high-interest projects. This recent webinar focused on innovative approaches to financing housing development and featured three speakers from across the country.
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Alternative approaches in financing or project development can be slow to move from one community to another. The Building the Stack series is designed to help lift up good ideas and demystify the development of key project types of interest by allowing attendees to explore real case studies with a variety of stakeholders who are developing the projects, providing the financing, or steering development in their communities. This webinar featured leaders championing new models for funding and constructing smart growth-aligned housing types such as co-ops and affordable housing.
The first speaker was Sherry Taylor, the Executive Director of Durham Community Land Trustees, who spoke about the community land trust (CLT) model and two projects in the Durham area. Dave Foster of BDP Impact Real Estate then presented on Community Solutions’ social impact equity fund and its efforts to help nine communities house veterans exiting homelessness by acquiring existing multifamily buildings. Josh Morrison, COO and Co-founder at Frolic Community, then discussed Frolic Community’s work redeveloping rezoned single family lots into multi-family housing co-operatives in partnership with the previous single family homeowner.
<h2>Key takeaways</h2>
Throughout the webinar, a number of key takeaways emerged:
1. Non-conventional financing methods can and have been templated from one place to another. Sherry Taylor discussed the beginnings of the land trust movement and the proliferation of the model across the country since 1969. Dave Foster discussed how Community Solutions is currently in process on Fund II of their Large Cities fund aimed at ending veteran homelessness after Fund I, their initial round, successfully raised capital to support projects in several communities across the country.
2. Non-conventional financing methods offer innovative frameworks for development, but require flexibility and patience from developers and funders to bring projects into reality. Sherry Taylor explained that land trusts provide an overall model for development and perpetual affordability, with several different collaboration options that shape how development occurs. She also discussed the way that taking out the land from a capital stack complicates the financing for a project, requiring creativity from all partners involved to complete the stack. Josh Morrison discussed the complexities of working with a homeowner to convert a single family home and financing through a co-op structure.
3. Non-conventional financing methods can help bring homeownership within reach for a broader range of community members. Both the Frolic model and the community land trust model both deliver affordable homeownership options for community members. While they are not operating at the scale of traditional financing methods, they are helping to fill a critical gap for households traditionally unable to own homes.
4. Constraints of the development ecosystem as it stands are real–but that’s where innovative approaches can help fill the gap. Dave Foster highlighted the way social impact capital was able to deliver affordable units at a fraction of the cost on a much faster timeline than a traditional Low Income Housing Tax Credit project. Sherry Taylor highlighted how the Guthrie Village ADU project took advantage of the ability to add ADUs in her community to create a pocket neighborhood to create affordable, supportive housing for veterans.
Are you a purpose-driven developer or investor? Consider joining Smart Growth America’s <a href="https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/programs-and-coalitions/locus/">LOCUS coalition</a>. LOCUS, latin for ‘place’, is a national coalition of real estate developers and investors who advocate for smart growth at the federal level, with occasional work at the state and local levels. LOCUS brings together real estate developers and investors from across the country to change policy and to build neighborhoods that are more economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable for America’s future. LOCUS is driven by the vision of a country in which every person lives in a vibrant and healthy community. Membership provides access to monthly briefings, policy development conversations, and curated newsletters to keep you and your organization informed. Learn more about joining <a href="https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/programs-and-coalitions/locus/join-locus/">LOCUS</a>!

Building the stack: Innovative approaches to financing housing development webinar recap

red bank 3

Complete Streets is not just a term to be slapped onto a policy or resolution. Complete Streets is an approach to road design that not only improves the safety for those walking, biking, or rolling, but also boosts local economies, and helps create resilient and vibrant communities. Strong policies are the first and critical step in the larger process of creating roads that are designed for all users, regardless of their mode, age, or ability.
In 2023 and 2024, <a href="https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/signature-reports/best-complete-streets/">43 Complete Streets policies</a> were adopted across the nation as state and local governments try to enable safe road access for a larger variety of users. Many of these policies were from <a href="https://www.nj.gov/transportation/eng/completestreets/pdf/CS_Policy_703_Signed_and_dated.pdf">New Jersey,</a> likely influenced by a new <a href="https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/signature-reports/best-complete-streets-state-policies/#:~:text=Policy%20scores%20averaged%20around%2050%20points%20for%20New%20Jersey%20and%20around%2025%20for%20Washington.%20These%20patterns%20may%20be%20driven%20by%20statewide%20incentives%2C%20guidance%2C%20and%20model%20policy%20language%20aimed%20at%20encouraging%20policy%20adoption.">statewide policy</a> that gives special consideration to municipalities that have adopted Complete Streets policies when allocating state and federal transportation funds. Though this sparked many local governments in NJ to create and pass their own Complete Streets policies, the policies that came out of towns varied in quality; the average score of NJ municipalities was only 50. Two, however, stood out amongst the rest. Red Bank and Asbury Park in Monmouth County had some of the best policies from 2023-24, scoring 69 and 70, respectively. Both areas have relatively small populations (less than 15,500) but are known amongst Monmouth county residents to have vibrant downtown areas.
When grading Complete Streets Policies, our criteria specifically looks at the content of the policy and not the projects and changes that result. Although we don’t officially evaluate changes on the ground, we know that strong policies help get the ball rolling for such changes. To see how policies are helping enact change, let’s take a look at the policies and the work being done in two NJ locales: Red Bank and Asbury Park.
<h3>Policies</h3>
Red Bank and Asbury Park stand out especially because of their distinctness from the other NJ policies and NJDOT’s policy, which only scores a 45. Though the statewide policy does a good job of establishing commitment and vision and applying the policy to all projects and phases, it does a much poorer job of prioritizing underinvested and underserved communities, setting criteria for choosing projects, and creating a plan for implementation. In contrast, Red Bank and Asbury Park’s policies scored higher than the state’s policy in many of our <a href="https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/knowledge-hub/resources/elements-complete-streets-policy/">Complete Streets Policy Framework criteria,</a> going beyond the state’s policy.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-107114 size-medium" src="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Screenshot-2025-08-14-at-12.48.45-PM-300x169.png" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Screenshot-2025-08-14-at-12.48.45-PM-300x169.png 300w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Screenshot-2025-08-14-at-12.48.45-PM-1024x578.png 1024w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Screenshot-2025-08-14-at-12.48.45-PM-768x434.png 768w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Screenshot-2025-08-14-at-12.48.45-PM.png 1250w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Red Bank and Asbury Park scored near equal or higher in almost every framework principle; they both do a good job of laying the groundwork for measuring progress of projects—something the statewide policy lacked in. They also both do a better job creating an implementation plan.
<h3>Red Bank</h3>
Red Bank is a small borough with just under 13,000 people and a land area of 1.7 square miles. Though a small area, the downtown district attracts many people from towns all around the county. Due to the commercial shops and restaurants downtown, there’s a high amount of foot traffic. There’s also lots of vehicular pass-through traffic that’s associated with the NJ State Route 35 and Garden State Parkway exit just outside of the borough.
Red Bank’s proximity to the highway and to the train station, as well as its historic character and charm, have made it an enticing borough to live in and commute from; the <a href="https://www.app.com/story/money/2025/01/29/monmouth-county-home-prices-rise-to-second-highest-in-new-jersey/77886186007/#:~:text=13.%20Red%20Bank%3A%20%24671%2C500%2C%20%2B23%25">housing demand in the borough has been increasing steadily.</a> With all the different kinds of traffic already going through the area, Red Bank has a large incentive to ensure walkability and pedestrian safety, not just downtown, but throughout the entire community. A Complete Streets policy has helped Red Bank develop safer multimodal transportation options as the borough continues to grow.
<figure id="attachment_107119" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-107119" style="width: 1024px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-107119 size-large" src="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/red-bank-1-1024x682.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="682" srcset="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/red-bank-1-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/red-bank-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/red-bank-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/red-bank-1-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/red-bank-1.jpg 1600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-107119" class="wp-caption-text">Crosswalk with a drive smart sign at the corner of Canal and Broad Street in Red Bank.</figcaption></figure>
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Red Bank began making meaningful progress under its <a href="https://njbikeped.org/wp-content/uploads/Red-Bank-Resolution-and-Policy-2018.pdf">2018 Complete Streets resolution,</a> using it as a springboard for several community-driven projects. In 2023, the town tested temporary bike lanes through a safety demonstration project aimed at gathering feedback and evaluating permanent changes—explicitly citing the 2018 policy as a guiding framework. That same year, Red Bank announced plans for pedestrian safety upgrades like bump-outs along heavily-trafficked Shrewsbury Avenue. They also added a <a href="https://tworivertimes.com/red-bank-officials-address-growth-change-with-community/">new bike lane</a> on Harrison Street, a residential corridor.
While the 2018 resolution helped establish a vision and support tactical urbanism efforts, it lacked enforceability. The newly-adopted Complete and Green Streets ordinance changes that. It requires all new development projects to implement Complete Streets practices and establishes an advisory committee to investigate pedestrian and bike safety, while also promoting green infrastructure like shade trees and bioswales to make streets cooler and more resilient.
Under their new 2023 Complete Streets policy, Red Bank has started to see new plans and development for projects. Monmouth Street, a road that connects downtown to the train station, is undergoing updates to its pedestrian infrastructure, and the city is developing a transit-oriented, mixed-use space near the station. Additionally, Red Bank received a <a href="https://www.redbanknj.org/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=345">$10,000 grant for a quick build</a> to improve pedestrian safety at the intersection of Leighton Avenue and River Street, a quieter part of the town.
<h3>Asbury Park</h3>
Asbury Park is a bit denser than Red Bank, with just under 15,200 residents and a land area 1.4 square miles. Asbury Park is well known for its boardwalk, which houses the city’s Convention Hall and Carousel, along the shore. As a town that becomes packed in the summer time with lots of foot traffic, providing multiple modes of transportation for people to get from downtown to the shore is imperative.
Asbury Park has long used one-way streets and stop signs to manage downtown traffic, but the city is now shifting toward new safety improvements like adding traffic signals and reconfiguring intersections at Third and Fourth Avenues. These changes build on a foundation laid by the city’s <a href="https://njbikeped.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Asbury-Park-Policy.pdf">2015 Complete Streets policy.</a> In the years since, Asbury Park has updated its <a href="https://asburyparkartscouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/City-of-Asbury-Park-2017-Master-Plan-and-Master-Plan-Re-Examination-Report.pdf">Master Plan</a> (2017), created a Plan for Walking and Biking (2018), and launched several safety projects, including a traffic signal with pedestrian bump-outs at Prospect and Bangs Avenues, currently underway. While the 2015 policy supported these efforts, it lacked requirements for private development and long-term oversight. The new 2024 ordinance addresses those gaps—applying to both public and private projects, formalizing the role of advisory boards, and including a planned policy audit in 2026 to ensure continued accountability.
<figure id="attachment_107116" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-107116" style="width: 1024px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-107116 size-large" src="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/ashbury-1-1024x643.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="643" srcset="https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/ashbury-1-1024x643.jpg 1024w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/ashbury-1-300x188.jpg 300w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/ashbury-1-768x482.jpg 768w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/ashbury-1-1536x965.jpg 1536w, https://wordpress.smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/ashbury-1.jpg 1600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-107116" class="wp-caption-text">The Paramount Theatre and Asbury Park Convention Hall.</figcaption></figure>
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As a result, Asbury Park has <a href="https://www.cityofasburypark.com/369/Ongoing-Construction">a number of ongoing projects</a> that ensure their streets accommodate multiple modes of transportation. On Asbury Avenue, the city is narrowing the roadway as a traffic calming measure and adding additional protected bike lanes. In a similar project, the city is reconstructing Memorial Drive and will add a protected bike lane to that road as well. Through these projects, the city hopes to encourage residents to choose more active modes of transportation.
Both Asbury Park and Red Bank demonstrate that while a policy alone isn’t a silver bullet, it can be a powerful tool for shaping long-term, people-centered change. Their progress shows how clear, enforceable policies—paired with reflection and updates over time—can turn good intentions into tangible improvements for residents, businesses, and the broader community.

Completing the streets in New Jersey: Two municipalities with the best Complete Streets policies

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