Livermore, CA passed one of the best Complete Streets policies of 2013. Which communities will be on the 2014 list?
Over 70 communities passed Complete Streets policies in 2014 and on February 10, Smart Growth America’s National Complete Streets Coalition will unveil which ones were the best.
County Executive Rushern Baker, Councilmember Roger Berliner, and County Executive Jan Gardner describe the smart growth efforts they are championing.
Over 50 local elected leaders from Maryland, including members of Smart Growth America’s Local Leaders Council, gathered on Wednesday, January 7 to discuss smart growth successes and challenges during the Maryland Association of Counties Winter Conference in Cambridge, MD. Smart Growth America and 1000 Friends of Maryland cosponsored the event.
The annual New Partners for Smart Growth conference brings together public officials, development professionals, advocates, and civic organizations to connect with experts from across the country and catch up on the evolving best practices in smart growth. Hundreds of speakers cross disciplines to share insights, tools and strategies for making smart growth a success in communities across the country.
This year’s conference will take place January 29-31, 2015 in Baltimore, MD, and Smart Growth America is excited to be one of the many organizations participating. If you plan to attend the conference, be sure to catch the following sessions featuring Smart Growth America’s members and staff.
Smart Growth America’s National Brownfields Coalition is the only national campaign dedicated to advocating for brownfields cleanup and redevelopment in Washington today. We encourage members of Congress and the Administration to support legislation and direct investment in brownfields cleanup and redevelopment.
Brownfields cleanup is a win-win-win-win: it creates jobs, spurs broader economic revitalization, helps people lead healthier lives, and protects the environment—all for a modest public investment. That’s something legislators on both sides of the aisle and from every state can get behind.
Made up of over 6,000 elected officials, professionals, business leaders, and advocates, the National Brownfields Coalition is the leading voice uniting the brownfields movement. We are proud to be at the forefront of this important national movement, and we welcome new allies to join our work.
Real estate developers can help address gentrification, make housing more affordable, and improve social equity—all while making a profit. How do we make this possible? And how does public policy need to change in order to do so?
Join us to discuss these and other questions at the 2015 LOCUS Leadership Summit: Private Sector Solutions to the Affordability and Social Equity Crisis. This fourth annual national Summit will be held on June 2-3, 2015 in Washington, D.C.
State transportation officials across the country are facing the same challenges: Revenues are falling and budgets are shrinking but transportation demands are continuing to grow.
Innovative approaches can help transportation officials succeed in the face of these challenges, and an updated resource from Smart Growth America and the State Smart Transportation Initiative (SSTI) outlines how.
The third edition of The Innovative DOT, released today, provides 34 strategies that transportation officials can use to position their agencies for success in a new era of constrained budgets. Originally released in 2012 and developed with input from top transportation professionals and agency staff from around the nation, the handbook documents many of the innovative approaches state leaders are using to make systems more efficient, government more effective and constituents better satisfied. The second edition was released in January 2014, and provided three additional tools and 20 new case studies.
“State DOTs across the country are using the tools in this guidebook with great success,” said Roger Millar, Vice President of Smart Growth America. “The third edition contains even more ideas for how DOT staff can lead and improve their agencies’ work.”
Woodglen Cycle Track in White Flint, MD. Photo courtesy of Dan Reed, via Flickr.
Home to more than one million residents and a thriving high-tech economy, Montgomery County, MD is far from a typical American suburb.
Located adjacent to Washington, DC, the county boasts strong research and biotechnology sectors, backed by one of the region’s mostly highly-educated populations: over half of residents above the age of 25 hold a college degree or higher. Now, thanks to the work of pioneering officials like Councilmember Roger Berliner, a member of the Maryland Chapter of Smart Growth America’s Local Leaders Council, Montgomery County has another badge of honor: it’s an emerging smart growth hot-spot.
“We have wonderful schools, wonderful green space, and one third of the county is set aside as an agricultural reserve. We are the economic engine of the state of Maryland,” says Councilmember Berliner. “We have historically been a suburban community and are now experiencing the growth of urban nodes and the benefits of those nodes in areas like Bethesda, Silver Spring, and Germantown.”
In July, we announced the launch of Urbanful, an urban culture magazine highlighting the innovations in design, technology, culture, and transportation that are changing how we live in cities. Urbanful’s stories highlight social entrepreneurs, planning innovations, arts, and culture in American cities large and small.
Now, we’re excited to announce the launch of Urbanful’s Marketplace, a one-stop shop for innovative products by urban manufacturers and artisans. The new Marketplace will make it much easier to connect directly with makers, their stories and their products.
Rockville Town Square in Rockville, MD. Photo by Dan Reed via flickr.
Located just outside Washington, DC to the northwest, suburban Rockville, MD is one of the largest municipalities in Maryland with a population just over 63,000. Rockville serves as the county seat of Montgomery County—the largest county in Maryland by population, with over 1 million residents.
Rockville’s Councilmember Julie Palakovich Carr, a member of the Maryland Chapter of Smart Growth America’s Local Leaders Council, is working to use transit access to help make Rockville a place with a unique identity and a strong sense of community. “Being a suburb of Washington, DC, we are struggling with traffic congestion and other issues that come with rapid growth and redevelopment,” she says. “A lot of it is just managing those things in a way that we are maintaining a good quality of life with nice neighborhoods where people can enjoy open space and parkland, while trying to envision a future where people may be using their cars less and people will be walking more and able to ride their bikes.”
As Congress has repeatedly postponed tough decisions on federal transportation funding, a handful of states have stepped up and passed new transportation funding legislation. In early 2015, a host of new state legislators and governors will be sworn in—and in many state capitols, transportation will be on the front burner.
Transportation advocates and legislators are invited to Capital Ideas: Raising Money for Transportation Through Innovative State Legislation on November 13-14, 2014 in Denver, CO. This two-day conference hosted by Transportation for America will explore new ways to raise money for transportation projects.