While the U.S. Department of Transportation has gotten lots of attention for its efforts to promote livable communities, the Department of Health and Human Services is also determined to invest in livability – for health. They are directing $650 million to 44 communities through the Communities Putting Prevention to Work to institute policy and environmental changes that will help make the healthy choice the easy choice.
This study, conducted by Victoria Transport Policy Institute for APTA, “investigates ways that public transportation affects human health, and ways to incorporate these impacts into transport policy and planning decisions. This research indicates that public transit improvements and more transit oriented development can provide large but often overlooked health benefits.”
A series of materials produced by the Center for Transportation Excellence, “designed to successfully respond to critics of public transportation. Opponents using erroneous arguments and fomenting fear are eroding the great strides made over the past decade. CFTE’s resources in this section can help transit advocates win battles with critics at home and nationally.”
n this era of dramatically constrained fiscal resources, one state has made a concerted effort to be smarter stewards of their limited economic development dollars by focusing more of their spending on existing towns and communities rather than on potential new development at the edge or in outer townships. This week the Keystone Research Center (KRC) completed a study of Pennsylvania’s state economic development efforts funded by the William Penn Foundation. The new research shows that from 2003-2008 about 25% more of state economic development subsidies were directed to older existing areas than to outer townships on a per capita basis.
Will California’s plans for reducing dangerous climate-changing emissions help or hinder the building and development market? California’s most prominent association of real estate developers answered that question emphatically last week, saying that California’s law requiring regions to reduce emissions through smarter land use, transportation, and housing decisions is good for business.
Last month, the Minnesota Complete Streets Coalition celebrated the passage of a strong state law. They have kindly shared more information on the bill and how they did it, including lessons learned.
This post by SGA board member Kaid Benfield, originally appeared on his blog at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). We thank him for allowing us to reprint his post in full here, encourage you to read his blog daily, and join him in recognizing and thanking Richard Moe for his years of service preserving, building and advocating for American communities at the National Trust for Historic Preservation. As Kaid said to me, Smart Growth America might not exist without him. – Stephen Davis, SGA Communications Associate.
On a Friday where anyone can bring up a live video stream on their computer of oil still pouring from a broken well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, perhaps you, like a lot of Americans, feel a little powerless about it and aren’t sure what we can really do to prevent such a disaster in the future. While certainly not responsible for the spill itself, that well and thousands of others are there because we need quite a lot of oil every day.
Some of us here at SGA, through our other work at Transportation for America and the National Complete Streets Coalition, joined with other advocates for biking and walking to ride to the US DOT last Friday to thank Sec. LaHood for recent policy changes to include the needs of bikers and walkers in transportation planning. Check out the video from the T4America youtube channel.
Since 1995, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Brownfields Program has helped communities across the country assess and clean up thousands of those contaminated, vacant properties known collectively as “brownfields,” leveraging more than $14 billion in public and private investment and contributing to the creation of more than 60,000 jobs in the process. Over the last several months, Smart Growth America has been working as part of the National Brownfields Coalition to help reauthorize this vital program, with a series of amendments to improve it.