Many companies—from Fortune 500 titans to lean startups to independent manufacturers—are moving to places that offer great quality of life for their employees. As Smart Growth America detailed in our 2015 report Core Values: Why American Companies are Moving Downtown, these companies want vibrant neighborhoods with affordable housing options, restaurants, nightlife, and other amenities in … Continued
What do communities get for their investments in Complete Streets? In this study of 37 projects, Smart Growth America found that Complete Streets projects tended to improve safety for everyone, increased biking and walking, and showed a mix of increases and decreases in automobile traffic, depending in part on the project goal. Compared to conventional … Continued
Building Better Budgets: A National Examination of the Fiscal Benefits of Smart Growth Development surveys 17 studies that compare different development scenarios, including a brand-new study of Nashville-Davidson County, TN, commissioned specifically for this report.
Smart Growth America analyzes states’ investments in infrastructure to determine whether they made the best use of their spending based on job creation numbers. “Recent Lessons from the Stimulus: Transportation Funding and Job Creation” evaluates how successful states have been in creating jobs with their flexible $26.6 billion of transportation funds from the American Reinvestment … Continued
This report reviews American Recovery and Reinvestment Act project choices to answer critical questions about states’ accountability to the taxpayers who are providing tens of billions of dollars for new transportation projects.
Are all transportation projects of equal value to long‐term economic growth? If not, is it possible to select projects with better return and still move money and employ people in the economy quickly? Smart Growth America commissioned the following papers to answer these questions.