A strong Complete Streets policy adopts excellent design guidance (element #6)

What facilitates the transition from a policy into tangible street designs? To bring a Complete Streets policy to life, engineers need to know how to design these streets in very clear, concrete terms. The best Complete Streets policies will adopt excellent street design guidance that directs and supports practitioners to create an accessible and complete network of streets.

Uncategorized

A strong Complete Streets policy measures progress (element #8)

How do you know if your Complete Streets policy is working? You measure it. And then you share the results publicly. A strong Complete Streets policy requires tracking performance measures across a range of categories—including implementation and equity—and making someone responsible for doing it.

Uncategorized

A strong Complete Streets policy requires proactive and supportive land-use planning (element #7)

Streets don’t exist in a vacuum. They are inextricably connected to the buildings, sidewalks, spaces, homes, businesses, and everything else around them that they serve. The strongest Complete Streets policies require the integration of land-use planning to best sync up with a community’s desires for using and living on their land today and in the future.

Uncategorized

A strong Complete Streets policy sets criteria for choosing projects that prioritizes Complete Streets projects (element #9)

Every local community, region, and state has a process by which they choose which transportation projects to fund and build. A strong Complete Streets policy changes that process by adding new or updated criteria that give extra weight to projects that advance Complete Streets and improve the network.

Uncategorized

A strong Complete Streets policy prioritizes underinvested and underserved communities (element #2)

Building a complete and connected transportation network requires investing in places and people that have not received investment. The strongest Complete Streets policies will specifically prioritize underinvested and underserved communities based on the jurisdiction’s composition and objectives.

Uncategorized

New Report: Housing Affordability in Northwest Arkansas 

Northwest Arkansas (NWA) is experiencing a significant and fast paced population growth, and, as a result, housing supply is constrained. A regional approach is needed to sufficiently address this housing crisis and develop a plan to accommodate the population growth throughout the region.  Smart Growth America (SGA) partnered with ULI Northwest (ULI NWA) in a … Continued

Uncategorized

“Complete Streets” are being co-opted to build unsafe streets. Who is at fault?

Saying that the “Complete Streets mindset” is the problem when a transportation agency builds a dangerous high-speed road and calls it a “complete street” is like calling for the repeal of the Clean Air Act when a highway agency claims their widening project will reduce emissions.

Uncategorized

SGA comments on EPA’s Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant Program

Last week, Smart Growth America submitted comments on the design of the Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant Program (ECJ Program), created under the Inflation Reduction Act, on the types of projects EPA could prioritize, requirements that should be applied to ensure projects are community-driven, and different types of technical assistance that could support the … Continued

Climate Change