Blog

Five street safety goals for 2025

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The Thriving Communities team at Smart Growth America, alongside our partners at the National Complete Streets Coalition, worked tirelessly throughout 2024 to advance our vision of healthy, prosperous, and resilient communities. We saw many successes, from our Complete Streets Leadership Academies helping to shape safe streets policies and implementation across the country to our Dangerous by Design report influencing the national conversation about street design. Despite this, we’re ending the year facing many of the same issues that we started it with—historically high pedestrian fatalities, communities chipping away at decades of car-centric design, and far too little support for the type of systemic change we know is needed.

Complete Streets

Demand for walkable places remains high

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Over the weekend, the Washington Post published a story titled “Why so many Americans prefer sprawl to walkable neighborhoods.” If the headline doesn’t make you raise your eyebrow, then the author’s reasoning certainly will: Citing a recent survey from Pew, the article discusses why people may prefer sprawl (and the big houses and longer commutes … Continued

Land Use and Development Transportation

Equity Forum: Centering community to prevent displacement

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Join us on Thursday, December 12 from 1:30-3:30 p.m. for our Equity Forum: Centering community to prevent displacement. The event will feature Sheila Somashekhar from the Purple Line Corridor Coalition, participants from SGA’s Community Connectors and Healing our Highways programs, and partners with ICF and Partnership for Southern Equity, who will present a new resource … Continued

Advancing Racial Equity Events

Zoning matters in rural areas, too: Why rural communities must consider zoning reform

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When we think of zoning reform, the focus often lands on cities—dense urban cores, sprawling suburbs, and the challenges they face with housing affordability, transportation, and equity. However, zoning and zoning solutions are just as critical for rural areas. These communities are deeply impacted by inefficient and exclusionary land-use policies, with consequences that threaten their character, economies, and long-term sustainability.

Rural Development Zoning

Smart Growth America joins YIMBY Caucus to tackle the housing crisis

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On November 21, Smart Growth America and LOCUS joined a diverse coalition of nonprofit organizations to support bipartisan members of the U.S. House of Representatives who launched the YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) Caucus. Members of the YIMBY Caucus are brought together by their commitment to advance policies that address the housing access crisis. SGA … Continued

Advocacy Land Use and Development

Our path forward from the 2024 elections

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As the dust from this election cycle settles, it is more apparent than ever that communities are facing increasingly severe and compounding challenges. Economic inequities and the financial pressures tied to the needs of daily life are squeezing communities of every shape, size, and geographic location—and housing and transportation costs are clear contributors to these burdens.

Advancing Racial Equity Climate Change Economic development Land Use and Development Rural Development Transportation
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