Governors’ Institute on Community Design
For more than 15 years, The Governors’ Institute on Community Design was a Smart Growth America-led project to engage directly with governors and their cabinets and staff in a hands-on, one-on-one fashion, to address economic development, housing, transportation, and other pressing issues that relate to how communities grow and develop. After more than a decade of successful work, the Institute’s focus on equipping state leaders has been incorporated into many other areas of Smart Growth America’s work.
Notable work and resources:
Workshops with governors: Since its inception in the 2000s in the early years of Smart Growth America’s history, GICD conducted more than four dozen in-person multi-day workshops with governors, cabinet secretaries, and their staff. These workshops were tailored in cooperation with these governors and brought in nationally renowned experts to help them tackle their highest priorities when it comes to growth- and development-related challenges.
Building A Better State DOT: In 2017-2018, GICD helped a small group of state departments of transportation question and assess the underlying assumptions that result in giant highway solutions for every transportation problem. That work resulted in a package of memos for governors and this series of posts about states that are finding success through what’s known as practical solutions, a way for transportation departments to meet changing demands and plan, design, construct, operate, and maintain context-sensitive transportation networks that work for all modes of travel.
The Why and How of Measuring Access to Opportunity: A Guide to Performance Management (2017): Transportation agencies are increasingly interested in measuring access to jobs, education, healthcare, and other essential services to assess how well their system links people to their daily destinations and broader opportunity, but many aren’t sure how to get started or measure these things. This resource was written to help transportation agencies integrate measurements of “access to opportunity” into their planning and investment decisions. (For more on the basics of why measuring access matters, see the simple third principle of Transportation for America’s platform: Connect people to jobs and services)
Building Resilient States (2015-2017): This consists of two separate resources, both intended to introduce and integrate land use and transportation issues into states’ conversations about resilience. The Framework was designed to help disaster preparedness professionals understand how strategic decisions about land use and transportation can make communities more resilient from the ground up. And the subsequent Profiles in Action are a set of companion case studies which highlights several local, regional, and statewide resilience efforts and explores how the advice provided in the Framework can be applied.
Policies that Work: A Governors’ Guide to Growth and Development (2009): This guide has hundreds of examples of proven programs to help governors and their states encourage smarter and more environmentally sustainable patterns of development. Produced with feedback from numerous state-level staff and administrative staff, it provided a roadmap to smarter growth at the state level.
Benefits of Complete Streets: Goleta, CA
The City of Goleta is testing out new solutions to improve accessibility and safety for people traveling by foot, on a bike, on wheels or using transit in their community. One such project is an “interim” street restriping in their historic business district, Old Town. To test out how this project would benefit Goleta residents, … Continued
New anti-displacement fact sheets for communities undergoing brownfields redevelopment
In partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Brownfields and Land Revitalization, Smart Growth America (SGA) created a set of fact sheets that highlight strategies communities can use to help mitigate displacement in the contexts of brownfields redevelopment. SGA conducted interviews with community groups and municipal leaders from across the country to learn more about strategies to minimize residential and business displacement as well as implementation practices.