Planetizen phoned up our incoming President and CEO for a phone conversation this week about the future of Smart Growth America and our movement at large. They recorded the chat for one of their regular podcasts, so if you’d like to hear a little bit from Geoff, run over to Planetizen and have a listen to the conversation.
On the opportunities for the smart growth movement in 2008:
The market really wants this stuff. When you can look at reforming policy in a way that helps to meet market demand, that’s a great alignment.
It’s demographic shifts changing housing preferences, it’s changes in energy prices and what that means for gas prices, it’s the climate issue — all those things really create an opportunity…At the fundamental level, I think what we’re seeing is that people in communities, when presented with an alternative type of development — where it’s not replacing the existing one but simply offering different choices, they’re saying that “these are choices we want.” At the grassroots level that’s what happening, and I think that creates a whole set of opportunities that weren’t there even 10 years ago.