To help it create a more sustainable community, this inner suburb of Detroit sought a zoning code audit from Smart Growth America and Clarion Associates. The audit focused on stormwater management, green infrastructure, and housing diversity. Since the audit, Royal Oak has made significant progress around its land use and sustainability goals.
Between September 2017 and January 2018, the National Complete Streets Coalition worked with 30 transportation professionals from the Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga regions in Tennessee to identify and overcome common barriers to Complete Streets implementation. In the seven months since then, each region has taken steps to move Complete Streets forward in their communities.
Today, Smart Growth America announced the selection of six communities that will receive technical assistance in using small-scale manufacturing as a strategy to create economic opportunity, boost the prospects of Main Street, and build great places. This assistance is made possible through funding from the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA).
Last month, the Complete Streets team returned to Colorado for the second workshop of the Consortium Series. The series brings together three teams from the Cities of Aurora, Arvada, and Westminster along with representatives from regional health and transportation agencies. To help these places make the most of new and upcoming transit amenities in the Denver region, this workshop focused on creating first-mile/last-mile connections through Complete Streets.
This month on the podcast Building Better Communities with Transit we’re chatting with Susan Henderson of PlaceMakers about the use and benefits of form-based codes. We talk about the focus of these codes (the public realm where people gather and interact with each other), how they are used to support transit, and how a code can affect the streets around them.
The small Colorado town of Pagosa Springs is focused on revitalizing its downtown and supporting more mixed-use, walkable development to both address a lack of affordable housing and accommodate a large volume of tourists. There are a number of opportunities to make progress in the near-term, including turning a recent disaster in the downtown into a catalytic redevelopment opportunity.
Smart Growth America is offering free technical assistance to six communities interested in using small-scale manufacturing to help revitalize a downtown or neighborhood and create economic opportunity.
Last December, we selected the cities of Aurora, Arvada, and Westminster, CO to participate in the second Complete Streets Consortium Series. Throughout the series, teams from these three Denver suburbs, along with staff members from regional agencies, will work together to develop actionable Complete Streets policies that help them achieve their goals, including building transportation networks to serve all people who use the streets and providing more and better first-mile/last-mile connections to transit. This April, we met in Westminster, CO for the first of three workshops in the series.
Millinocket, Maine epitomizes the plight of many rural communities across the country that struggle as legacy industries or major employers that once helped sustain a place slow down or close altogether. Millinocket has found new hope in part by pairing improved broadband internet access with a new focus on downtown revitalization, giving the community the chance to take hold of their future and “actually build something” new.
Many rural communities in America have been struggling as the economy has changed dramatically over the last few decades, but some of these communities are evolving and finding new ways to adapt. This is a story of how one small mountain town in northeast Tennessee has found new economic opportunity by investing in reliable, high-speed broadband internet to catalyze new growth and development focused in their walkable, historic downtown.