As part of our Climate & Land Use Technical Assistance Program, Smart Growth America partnered with a local Florida-based organization, Incubate Neighborhood Center (INC), to raise awareness about the impacts that intensifying storms and flooding have on housing affordability, infrastructure, and economic development in their community. Focused on the Fort Pierce area in St. Lucie … Continued
Smart Growth America is partnering with three community-based organizations on a Technical Assistance (TA) program funded by Kresge Foundation that addresses climate, land use, and housing topics. The program is designed to support community partners to effectively advocate for planning policies that are more prepared for the impacts of climate change such as flooding and … Continued
We took a look at one busy road outside of Orlando where a dozen people have been struck and killed by drivers in recent years. The mix of high-speed traffic with people walking, biking, and taking transit is a dangerous combination; in the event of a crash, people die. The Complete Streets Act of 2019 would go a long way to give local government more resources to redesign these dangerous streets so everyone can travel along them safely.
Communities shouldn’t wait for a flood or a hurricane to see how land use choices will affect their ability to remain resilient in the face of disaster. Many states and municipalities are already thinking strategically about how land use, transportation, and infrastructure decisions can help them prepare for and mitigate the impact of disasters. Building … Continued
Communities shouldn’t wait for a flood or a hurricane to see how land use choices will affect their ability to remain resilient in the face of disaster.
In October 2015, the Governors’ Institute on Community Design, a program run in partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Smart Growth America, released Building Resilient States: A Framework for Agencies, a report intended to introduce and integrate land use and transportation issues into states’ conversations about resilience. The Framework was designed to help … Continued
Ever since the first edition of Dangerous by Design came out in 2009, Florida has had the dubious distinction of having the highest rate of people being struck and killed by cars while walking of any state in the nation.
In light of that problem, municipalities and public agencies across Florida have been working to make streets safer. Now, communities in Central Florida specifically are coming together to make progress on those goals.
Over the past nine months, Smart Growth America, in partnership with the Winter Park Health Foundation, has worked with municipalities and agencies in Central Florida on a series of workshops to implement Complete Streets—streets that are safe and comfortable for everyone, no matter their age, ability, race, income, or how they chose to travel. Changing the way streets are designed, particularly in places with chronic collisions like Florida, is one of the most important steps public agencies can take to prevent people from being struck and killed while walking.
The Winter Park Health Foundation engaged Smart Growth America to help the Central Florida region identify and address specific barriers hindering local decision-makers’ ability to build Complete Streets: roadways that are safe and comfortable for all users – people walking, bicycling, and taking transit, people driving and truck drivers making deliveries. This project includes representation … Continued
Last month, the National Complete Streets Coalition joined the South Florida Safe Streets Summit, an annual conference co-hosted by the metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) of Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade counties. The day was jam-packed with informative and inspirational presentations by local elected officials, planners, authors, professors, and transportation advocates, and Emiko Atherton, Director of the National Complete Streets Coalition, delivered the keynote address. Here are five things we learned during the event.
On Tuesday we released Dangerous by Design 2016, new research looking at the epidemic of pedestrian fatalities across the United States and how changing the way we build our streets can help address it.