A Mississippi community plugs into internet to power up downtown


Natchez, Mississippi has never been connected to the interstate highway system. But today, with help from Smart Growth America, the city is revitalizing its historic downtown and also working to connect to the rest of the world through a newer medium: high-speed, broadband internet. 

Economic development Rural Development Technical assistance

Seen and heard at the 2019 LOCUS Leadership Summit

a view of downtown DC from across the river in Virginia
Last week the LOCUS Leadership Summit: Opportunity Rising brought forward-thinking real estate developers and investors who are creating sustainable communities together with local elected officials and transportation and land-use planners. Here’s a short look back at what was caught live on Twitter at #LOCUSSummit2019.

LOCUS

Announcing our inaugural Arts, Culture and Transportation Fellows


Transportation for America, a program of Smart Growth America, announces its inaugural class of fellows for the new Arts, Culture and Transportation Fellowship to help 11 individuals in four cities take their work at the intersection of arts and transportation to the next level.

Creative Placemaking Transportation

The time tested value of walkability


Smart Growth America/LOCUS today released Foot Traffic Ahead 2019, a report which ranks the 30 largest metros in the United States based on the percentage of office, retail and rental multi-family space each has in their walkable urban places. The report powerfully illustrates the price premiums investors and buyers are willing to pay to live or work in walkable, transit-connected neighborhoods—and why we urgently need to build more of them.

Uncategorized

Announcing winners of 2019 Driehaus Form-Based Codes Award


Today, the Form-Based Codes Institute at Smart Growth America honors three communities for stepping up to placemaking with the adoption of some of the most exemplary form-based codes in the country. The Driehaus Form-Based Codes Award is awarded by FBCI with the generous support of the Richard H. Driehaus Charitable Lead Trust.

Form-Based Codes

Form-based codes: A means to equity in a compassionate city


A century of traditional land-use practices has ingrained inequities deep into communities across America. We’ve produced sprawling, auto-oriented development that has also separated people based on wealth, ethnicity, and race. Form-based zoning is well-positioned to compliment equity-driven public policies, while also enabling walkable, human-scaled development that residents and businesses love.

Form-Based Codes

Passenger rail a lynchpin of smart, walkable development


Passenger rail along the Gulf Coast has been absent since 2005 when Hurricane Katrina wiped out much of the infrastructure. But Smart Growth America, through our Transportation for America (T4America) program, has been coordinating a monumental effort to restore service along the Gulf Coast and that work is paying off.

Advocacy Technical assistance