Following the success of our inaugural Safe Streets Academy, the National Complete Streets Coalition is excited to announce a new opportunity for free technical assistance. The Safe Streets, Smart Cities Academy will help three cities transform their commitment to traffic safety into practice. Applications are now open. Learn more about how to apply below or applicant FAQ.
A recording of our webinar, “Complete Streets in Canada: Designing for change,” is now available. Watch the webinar or read the brief recap.
Last month, the Complete Streets team returned to Colorado for the second workshop of the Consortium Series. The series brings together three teams from the Cities of Aurora, Arvada, and Westminster along with representatives from regional health and transportation agencies. To help these places make the most of new and upcoming transit amenities in the Denver region, this workshop focused on creating first-mile/last-mile connections through Complete Streets.
Last month, we shared the stories of how Orlando, FL, Lexington, KY, and South Bend, IN launched demonstration projects to create safer streets. Watch the webinar with representatives from all three cities who spoke about lessons learned from their experiences developing demonstration projects.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve gotten a lot of questions about the free, technical assistance Smart Growth America is offering in partnership with the U.S. Economic Development Administration and Recast City. This FAQ addresses many of the common questions we’ve received.
The First & Main coalition of local elected leaders sent a letter this week to Congress and the Trump administration urging them not to cut or eliminate programs upon which these local communities rely.
With free technical assistance from SGA on the issue available right now, it’s a good time to talk about what small-scale manufacturing is and how it can be a powerful part of the recipe for building great downtowns and neighborhoods in communities of nearly any size.
Smart Growth America is offering free technical assistance to six communities interested in using small-scale manufacturing to help revitalize a downtown or neighborhood and create economic opportunity.
Even after decades of safety improvements, more people are now dying on our roadways every year, especially people walking. This happens in part because we continue to design our streets to prioritize moving cars—not people—as quickly as possible, creating a dangerous, high-speed environment for all people who use the street. To test out creative approaches to safer street design, the National Complete Streets Coalition launched the Safe Streets Academy. We worked with three cities around the country to build skills in safer street design, creative placemaking, and community engagement, then helped the cities put these skills into practice. Through demonstration projects, the City of Orlando, FL, the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government, KY, and the City of South Bend, IN transformed their streets, intersections, and neighborhoods into slower, safer places for people. Communities around the country can learn from the stories of these demonstration projects to test out low-cost ways to create safer streets.
To address recurring, dangerous speeding problems on neighborhood streets, the City of South Bend launched a demonstration project to test out traffic-calming tools they had never used before including traffic circles, chicanes, and bump outs. They worked closely with the local community to decide where these traffic-calming strategies were most needed. They also added educational signs to help teach people how street design can improve safety by encouraging drivers to slow down while simultaneously creating more vibrant places for people. As a result of this demonstration project, drivers drove slower on these streets, and South Bend also built trust with the community. To replicate the success of this project elsewhere, South Bend will develop a toolkit based on this experience to launch additional traffic calming projects in other neighborhoods throughout the city to improve safety and convenience for people on foot or bike.