Author: Sam Warlick

El primer congreso de Calles Completas en Puerto Rico

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AARP PR Director Jose AcaronJosé Acaron, director of AARP Puerto Rico, speaks before the Puerto Rico Complete Streets Congress. Photo by AARP Puerto Rico, via Facebook.

The first-ever Puerto Rico Complete Streets Congress for Professionals, presented by AARP Puerto Rico on October 3, convened 160 transportation, public health, and other community leaders who want to elevate Complete Streets policies and strategies across the island.

Covering topics ranging from the benefits of Complete Streets to best practices in implementation to design guidance, the event was featured insights from Complete Streets workshops instructor Paul Zykofsky; Ana Rius, Secretary of Health Department for Puerto Rico; Miguel Torres, Secretary of Transportation and Public Works for Puerto Rico; Zaki Mustafa, past present of Institute of Transportation Engineers, a National Complete Streets Coalition Steering Committee member; and long-time Complete Streets advocate Dan Burden.

Complete Streets

Innovative partnerships drive economic discussion at State Resilience Summit

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netherlandsA project in the Netherlands combined flood mitigation with local housing development. Photo by Royal Netherlands Embassy.

When state governments focus on resilience, who should be their key partners? How can unconventional stakeholders lend their support to the process?

Those questions took center stage today at the Governors’ Institute on Community Design State Resilience and Economic Growth Summit in Washington, DC. The two-day event is bringing together experts on disaster recovery and long-term resilience to discuss best practices and new strategies for states. The Governors’ Institute on Community Design is an initiative of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Transportation administered by Smart Growth America.

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Join Smart Growth America at ULI Washington’s Walkable Urban Places Conference

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Photo via the George Washington University’s Center for Real Estate and Urban Analysis. Smart Growth America will join ULI Washington’s third annual Walkable Urban Places Conference on Tuesday, September 16, 2014 in Washington, DC, and we want to see you there. The day-long conversation about housing affordability in revitalizing neighborhoods will dive into the complexity … Continued

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Inside Dangerous by Design: Pedestrian fatalities among people of color

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Pedestrians walking in the Atlanta metro region. Photo via Flickr.

Pedestrian deaths are a national epidemic in the United States. Within that epidemic, though, some populations have been hit harder than others.

In Dangerous by Design 2014, we ranked America’s most dangerous metropolitan areas for walking using our Pedestrian Danger Index (PDI). We investigated the nature of over 47,000 pedestrian deaths from 2003 through 2012 and identified the regions that most needed to improve pedestrian safety. In more recent years, many of them, including the Florida Department of Transportation, have started taking steps to keep people on foot safe.

But our analysis of demographic data, included in the report from a state-by-state view, also told a story of inequity.

Complete Streets

Inside Foot Traffic Ahead: sub-urban places and the future of walkability  

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Belmar-festivalFestival Italiano in walkable sub-urban Belmar, Denver, CO. Photo via Flickr.

Walkable real estate is in high demand in America’s large metros, and tomorrow’s most successful cities will be the ones that capture that market—but the walkable places they build may not look like today’s downtowns.

In Foot Traffic Ahead, our June report co-released by our LOCUS coalition and the Center for Real Estate and Urban Analysis at the George Washington University School of Business, we ranked America’s largest metropolitan areas based on their projected future growth in development of walkable places. That list of nascent future walkable real estate hot spots included surprise contenders like Atlanta, Denver, and Los Angeles—far from the usual suspects for such rankings. Meanwhile, some famously walkable cities like Portland, Pittsburg, and Baltimore were projected to fall behind.

The difference owes to walkable sub-urban places, an unconventional category that includes both historic town-center type suburbs and modern transit-oriented developments. In our highest-projected metro areas—from Washington, DC to Atlanta, GA—a large percent of new growth is expected to take the walkable sub-urban form.

LOCUS

Senate, House tangle over highway funding cliff

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In the past week, with just days left before the Highway Trust Fund runs dry, both the Senate and the House of Representatives passed short-term measures that would keep the fund solvent through the end of this year.

While both plans are essentially short-term patches for a long-term problem—meeting America’s growing infrastructure needs with funding from a gas tax that hasn’t risen since 1993—the Senate version, passed Tuesday, is a big step in the right direction.

Gone are the pension-smoothing and accounting gimmicks, included in the House’s earlier version of the bill, that Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) called “generational theft.” Furthermore, rather than delay the Trust Fund’s insolvency to May of 2015, the new proposal only runs through the end of this year, forcing Congress to confront a long-term solution sooner.

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Congress moves toward short-term transportation fix

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Chairman Wyden helped two committees arrive at a short-term fix.

This week, the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees moved toward passing a short-term fix for the transportation funding crisis, with each committee passing a complementary bill designed to keep the Highway Trust Fund solvent through at least early 2015. If passed into law, the bills would transfer $10.8 billion dollars to the trust fund, keeping federal transportation operations in the black for another few months.

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"They're gonna need to see this upstairs."

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Smart Growth America President Geoff Anderson personally delivered the safety rule comments to USDOT.

“They’re gonna need to see this upstairs” — that’s what the staff at the U.S. Department of Transportation said about your letters this week.

By Monday afternoon, over 1500 of you made your voices heard in support of stronger transportation safety measures through our online action. Geoff Anderson, president and CEO of Smart Growth America, personally delivered your letters calling on USDOT to require that states set real targets for reducing the number of deaths and serious injuries on our streets and that they be held accountable as they work toward those goals.

Complete Streets

Local Leaders gather in Washington for first-ever national Policy Forum

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Local leaders gathered to connect and share innovations at the 2014 Local Leaders Policy Forum. See more photos from the event on Flickr.

Leaders from 60 cities and counties in 28 states attended the Local Leaders Council’s inaugural Policy Forum in Washington, DC. Over two dozen leaders and industry experts made presentations about cultivating local small businesses, fighting displacement of lower-income residents, creating more housing downtown, reinvigorating main streets and corridors, and many more topics.

The event kicked off on June 15th with a welcome reception where leaders, Smart Growth America staff, and project partners mingled and got to know one another better. The co-chairs of the Local Leaders Council Advisory Board, Mayor Mick Cornett (Oklahoma City, OK) and former Mayor Mark Mallory (Cincinnati, OH) welcomed the leaders and highlighted the positive energy and passion for community building that was present in the room. They emphasized the importance of building on shared goals and learning from each other’s experiences—a core principle of the Local Leaders Council.

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America’s cities are still booming, says new census data

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Austin, TX grew by 9.2% in three years. Photo via Flickr. 

From San Jose to Sioux Falls, America’s cities are growing faster than the rest of the country — and within those cities, downtown is outpacing the suburbs.

New census data released Thursday shows that America’s cities continue to grow, with the strongest growth happening in Sun Belt cities like San Jose, Austin, and Nashville. Population in cities over 50,000 residents increased by 1.02%, on average, from 2012 through 2013. Growth in the suburbs improved as well but, despite a post-recession bump, continued to lag behind that in urban areas, with a rate of 0.96% over the same period.

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