The following article was written by Stewart Schwartz, SGA Board Member and Executive Director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth
The smart growth movement creates communities that are equitable, resilient, and well-connected to essential destinations no matter how you choose to get around. While Smart Growth America both operates at the federal level and locally in communities across the country, our partnerships with locally serving organizations and advocates to advance smart growth goals are essential to making communities work better for the folks who live there. Recently, the Coalition for Smarter Growth, an SGA partner, released their Blueprint for a Better Region for the Washington, DC metropolitan area—a stellar example of the important work being done on the ground, one that can be replicated in communities across the country.
The Coalition for Smarter Growth (CSG) recently released its updated Blueprint for a Better Region for the Washington, DC metropolitan area. The Blueprint highlights the challenges felt within the DC region and across the country: high housing costs, renewed sprawl, and traffic after the pandemic, economic and racial segregation, and climate change. It promotes a vision of walkable, inclusive, transit-oriented communities as the most sustainable and equitable way for the region to grow.
Watch a video about the Blueprint
New challenges—and opportunities
In parts of our region, as in communities across the country continued policies that promote sprawl and the huge shift to work-from-home during and after the pandemic have hurt downtown DC and Metrorail ridership, increased growth pressures in rural areas at the edge of suburbia, and potentially increased existing racial and economic segregation. Meanwhile, housing costs remain high amid unmet demand for housing in walkable urban places.
Dangerous road design is also an ever-pressing issue throughout the country, with pedestrian fatalities reaching a 40-year high in 2022. The DC region is failing all five of its road safety targets, with particularly alarming increases in deaths and serious injuries to pedestrians and bicyclists. Further, some jurisdictions continue massive highway and arterial road expansion (900 new lane miles planned), fueling more sprawl and traffic.
These challenges sparked CSG to produce its new Blueprint for a Better Region. CSG organizes its Blueprint under three pillars that could inform approaches nationwide:
- Create inclusive, vibrant communities
- Provide housing for all
- Offer more sustainable transportation choices
Inclusive, vibrant communities
Walkable, bikeable, transit-oriented communities provide easy access to jobs, services, retail, and community gathering spaces. This creates opportunities for connection and requires shorter and fewer car trips—reducing household transportation costs and greenhouse gas emissions. DC region households in TOD areas generate one-third the GHG emissions from transportation as those in the sprawling suburbs (see CNT’s H+T index for your city’s GHG emissions data).
The Blueprint calls for directing new homes and businesses to existing communities with access to transit; ensuring those communities are compact, walkable, bike-friendly, and mixed-use; and preserving rural farms, forests, and natural areas.
Convenient, sustainable transportation choices
The Blueprint calls for investing in public transit that is frequent, reliable, and convenient; making walking and biking comfortable and connected; and shifting from expanding highways and arterial roads. By focusing on moving people instead of cars, the region will provide more affordable and equitable access to opportunities, reduce how much people have to drive, improve health, and slash climate pollution. CSG’s vision is a network of walkable communities tied to the DC region’s transit system—Metrorail, a new Purple Line light rail, commuter rail, bus rapid transit, and other frequent bus corridors.
For example, TransitCenter’s updated Transportation Equity Dashboard shows that improvements in DC region transit service over 2022-2024 increased regional job access by 17 percent—40,000 additional jobs accessible by transit. With further investment by our local and state governments, Metro’s proposed Better Bus Visionary Network would save riders 20,000 hours in travel time every weekday.
Past smart growth successes
CSG released its first Blueprint in 2002. The vision it offered and CSG’s advocacy in the following years helped win the DC region’s long-term commitment to transit-oriented development (TOD).
- The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments Region Forward vision plan and subsequent reports and adopted policies prioritize a transit-oriented future.
- LOCUS founder Chris Leinberger with Dr. Tracy Hadden Loh features the DC region’s walkable urban places in their report The WalkUP Wake Up Call: DC 2016.
- In 2019, the region adopted housing targets to increase production to accommodate demand here (rather than in the exurbs), boost affordable housing, and locate 75 percent of all new units in walkable activity centers or near transit stations.
These changes illustrate that effective, local-level advocacy can lead to strong results, offering lessons for other regions and communities where smart growth principles haven’t yet taken root.
In summary
The Blueprint vision for the DC region depends on sustainable land use patterns, walkable communities, housing close to jobs, services, and transit, and a well-funded, frequent, and reliable transit network. The region, under the #DMVMoves initiative, is in the process of creating an updated transit vision plan and studying how to implement long-term, dedicated funding for its transit system. CSG and partners are at the table for these discussions.
Be sure to check out the Blueprint for a Better region video and recent webinar presentation. And if you live in the DC area, click the button to take the pledge to become a Smart Growth Champion. Shaping a more sustainable world requires all of us.