Complete Streets look different in every community. In partnership with AARP, we created a series of five videos showcasing Complete Streets efforts in diverse communities across the country. Our Championing Complete Streets series highlights Complete Streets efforts in Fort Wayne, IN, Versailles, KY, San Diego, CA, Missoula, MT, and Oklahoma City, OK. Complete Streets is … Continued
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.
The National Complete Streets Coalition is gearing up for their 2025 Best Complete Streets Policies report. This report will recognize communities across the country that are working to make their streets safer, healthier, and more equitable. It will also provide guidance and good practices for other communities that would like to adopt or strengthen their … Continued
Smart growth strategies help towns and cities across the country become healthier while improving resiliency and sustainability. With support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Active People, Healthy Nation Initiative, Smart Growth America’s Champions Institute provides mayors, city councilors, tribal chairpeople and councilors, and other local elected officials with knowledge and resources to … Continued
While the number of people hit and killed while walking is declining across the world, the US is the only developed nation with an increasing number of pedestrian deaths year after year. In 2022, 7,522 people were hit and killed while walking. Now, we’re trying to play catch up by adopting a decades-old UN rule that falls short of necessary common-sense pedestrian safety measures.
Troubling trends in two very different places highlight the urgent need to focus on systemic change to prevent additional deaths.
Smart Growth America and Transportation for Massachusetts are launching a statewide program to equip elected officials from across Massachusetts to effectively advocate for and support safer and more complete streets in their communities. Today, we are excited to announce the 15 participants of the first-ever Massachusetts Champions’ Institute.
October is National Pedestrian Safety Month, a time to recognize the numerous dangers, indignities, and inconveniences that pedestrians face every day in this country. It is also a time to imagine and plan how to do things differently. One city that is taking steps toward becoming a better place for pedestrians is Durham, North Carolina.
As the National Complete Streets Coalition works with communities to develop, adopt, and implement Complete Streets policies, we look to Transportation for America’s three key principles for guidance on what to prioritize and how to move to a brighter future in transportation.
Disabled Americans face significant challenges with independent travel, as they are more reliant on transit but often encounter accessibility barriers. This isolation leads to severe physical and mental health impacts, with loneliness affecting people with disabilities at over four times the rate of non-disabled individuals. Disabled Americans are less likely to own a personal vehicle in … Continued