Webinar Recap, Complete Streets for healthy living


This December, we continued our webinar series, Complete Streets 301: Putting people first, with a “Complete Streets for Healthy Living.” We welcomed Trust for America’s Health to talk about their new report, State of Obesity 2019, and how active transportation policy at the federal and state levels can improve the health of all Americans. A recording of the webinar with closed captioning is now available. You can also download a PDF of the presentation or read the brief recap below.

Complete Streets

Three Washington communities selected for Complete Streets Leadership Academy


The National Complete Streets Coalition is working with Washington-based partners to launch our first ever Complete Streets Leadership Academy. After a competitive application process, the cities of Wenatchee, Airway Heights, and Arlington have been selected to participate in this program to support safer, healthier streets.

Complete Streets

How can the change coming to suburbs be harnessed for good?

The notion of the suburbs is nestled deeply in the collective imagination in America, but as we wrote recently, “the suburbs of today aren’t necessarily the suburbs of yesteryear.” In a future that is increasingly urban, where suburbs are rapidly changing, what changes should they consider to stay prosperous and resilient? 

Complete Streets Economic development Form-Based Codes LOCUS Transportation Uncategorized

This family takes a liking to biking

Chris Rall and his two twins pictured on a bike.
Our family is a biking family. For us, that means being healthy, active, and having a lot of freedom and mobility. Biking is how our family chooses to get around, but building a family-friendly city means having streets that can help people get around in any number of ways—walking, biking, transit, scooting, or driving.

Advocacy Transportation

Webinar recap: Using an NCI charrette to create a vision for a form-based code


This November, we hosted “From vision to implementation: Using an NCI charrette to create a vision for a form-based code,” a joint webinar between the Form-Based Codes Institute and the National Charrette Institute. Speakers shared their experiences using NCI charrette workshops to develop form-based codes in Norman, OK and Arlington County, VA.

Form-Based Codes

What did we learn from a half-year of work on Opportunity Zones with six communities?


Throughout much of 2019, Smart Growth America’s LOCUS team worked hand-in-hand with six Massachusetts communities to harness Opportunity Zone investments to benefit rather than displace their residents, and result in walkable, mixed-use communities with a variety of employment and housing options for everyone. We spent a day earlier this month going overall we learned in a public event in Boston earlier this month.

LOCUS

The status quo should not be an option


Whether responding to growing demands for attainable housing, making streets safer in the face of a record number of people killed while walking, or seeking to improve inequities after decades of disinvestment in marginalized neighborhoods, the role of community builders today can be challenging—and contested. But it’s far too easy for local elected officials and planners to default to doing nothing when confronted with challenges or people who vehemently oppose change. When soliciting community involvement and feedback it should not be a matter of if something changes, but how, and whose voices are heard.

Advocacy

Family-friendly cities can take a cue from the past


While the words “housing” and “city” together may conjure images of skyscrapers and high-rise condo buildings, many cities today are dominated by single-family detached homes. But family-friendly cities need more housing and more housing variety. Cities should re-legalize modest homes and missing middle housing that allows choice and made them attractive places to live in the first place. In fact, creating a family-friendly city is more about going back to the past than about creating something new.

Economic development