Smart growth—building places that are healthy, resilient, and prosperous—requires tackling an almost impossibly long list of complicated issues. But Smart Growth America has the diverse experience required to move the needle.
Getting around is a perpetual logistical problem for families. The experience of getting to school, both as a student and now as a parent, has demonstrated to me just how inequitable our transportation system is and what a barrier it is to opportunity.
The State of Transportation and Health Equity, a field scan from Smart Growth America looks at the intersection of transportation and health equity in the U.S. today. Informed by 92 experts working across disciplines at the local, state, and federal level across the country, the report identifies the biggest challenges to health equity facing our transportation system and the strategies we should use to address them.
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.
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.
This year, Smart Growth America continued to produce vital research and other content that is changing the conversation around critical issues. This resources fuel our advocacy across the country and in the nation’s capital, fighting for a future that is healthy, prosperous, and resilient.
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?
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.
Our wish list this year is ambitious, but necessary. But we’re working hard to help realize this vision for communities across the country.
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.