With the creation of a new national academy for Opportunity Zones, Smart Growth America and our LOCUS coalition of responsible real estate investors continue to be on the forefront of helping communities use this tax incentive as a force for equitable growth that’s mutually beneficial for both investors and most importantly the people who live and do business in them.
As we travel the country, there are few things better than witnessing an elected official have an “a-ha” moment and realize that the conventional wisdom they’ve been handed down about growth and development perhaps wasn’t actually the best wisdom after all.
There’s a secret weapon available to communities that want to modernize their zoning codes and help make smarter growth the norm. FBCI’s Codes for Communities is a wide-ranging technical assistance program at Smart Growth America that covers all kinds of zoning reform and guidance on form-based codes. In just two years, the program has had tremendous impact in communities of all sizes across America.
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.
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.
Charlotte is booming. Since 2003, upwards of 12,000 new housing units have opened along the LYNX Blue line. But when planners went back to look at the development over the last decade, they weren’t entirely satisfied with the results. So the city decided to create new TOD zoning that would better reflect the needs and context of different stations as we hear on this month’s episode of Building Better Communities with Transit.
Transportation for America is excited to announce the Arts, Culture, and Transportation (ACT) Fellowship, a new opportunity for professionals to increase their knowledge of the transportation planning and design process, and develop creative placemaking skills to better integrate artistic and cultural practices in transportation projects.
This month on Building Better Communities with Transit we talk with Kendra Freeman, the director of community engagement for the regional Metropolitan Planning Council, about TOD in Chicago. A recent update to the city’s TOD policy puts a new focus on equitable development in a city that has seen stark differences in outcomes based on zip code.
Atmore—a rural city in southern Alabama—is poised to make some key land use decisions that will have a great impact on both its long-term economic prosperity and its fiscal health. To grapple with these choices, the city partnered with Smart Growth America to gain a better understand their impact.
State departments of transportation (DOTs) direct most of the transportation spending in the United States but they’re often focused on building highways and are ill-equipped to address the far more diverse mix of challenges they’re tasked with solving today. In a month-long series we just wrapped up, we examined how we got here, what state DOTs need to change, and how one state is putting its intentions into practice.