Take Advantage of Compact Building Design Resources

Smart growth provides a means for communities to incorporate more compact building design as an alternative to conventional, land consumptive development. Compact building design suggests that communities be designed in a way which permits more open space to preserved, and that buildings can be constructed which make more efficient use of land and resources. By encouraging buildings to grow vertically rather than horizontally, and by incorporating structured rather than surface parking, for example, communities can reduce the footprint of new construction, and preserve more greenspace. Not only is this approach more efficient by requiring less land for construction. It also provides and protects more open, undeveloped land that would exist otherwise to absorb and filter rain water, reduce flooding and stormwater drainage needs, and lower the amount of pollution washing into our streams, rivers and lakes.

Compact building design is necessary to support wider transportation choices, and provides cost savings for localities. Communities seeking to encourage transit use to reduce air pollution and congestion recognize that minimum levels of density are required to make public transit networks viable. Local governments find that on a per-unit basis, it is cheaper to provide and maintain services like water, sewer, electricity, phone service and other utilities in more compact neighborhoods than in dispersed communities.

Research based on these developments has shown, for example, that well-designed, compact New Urbanist communities that include a variety of house sizes and types command a higher market value on a per square foot basis than do those in adjacent conventional suburban developments. Perhaps this is why increasing numbers of the development industry have been able to successfully integrate compact design into community building efforts. This despite current zoning practices – such as those that require minimum lot sizes, or prohibit multi-family or attached housing – and other barriers - community perceptions of “higher density” development, often preclude compact design.

The 59th annual Honor Awards will be hosted by The American Institute of Architects (AIA) Seattle chapter on November 9, 2009. The event honors architects for their creative solutions and resourceful projects. With the theme “Improv\Improve,” this year’s Honor Awards will celebrate the agility, inventiveness and foresight architects bring to their work in this era of change – improvising and reacting quickly to new constraints, and going above and beyond to improve the built environment.

AIA Seattle received over 175 submissions — both envisioned and realized — ranging from commercial to residential and beyond. Projects are reviewed by a distinguished jury. Winning projects are first announced at the live Awards presentation. All projects submitted will be available to view online beginning October 20th at the link below.

Tickets also can be purchased online at the link below. Advance ticket sales end at 5pm, Sunday, November 8, 2009. Tickets also are available at the door the night of the event.

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) Housing and Custom Residential Knowledge Community has selected eight “Show You’re Green” projects as examples of outstanding housing that is both affordable and green. The knowledge community invited Show You’re Green submissions from architects and developers around the nation.

Housing Policy Debate (HPD) from the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech is an online journal that provides a venue for original housing and urban affairs research on a broad range of domestic and international topics. Subjects include the analysis of real estate and market trends, land use regulations, and metropolitan development patterns.

As part of its 10th year celebration, 1000 Friends of Wisconsin is recognizing ''10 of the Best'' individuals, organizations, companies, and efforts to promote better communities through land use and transportation ideas, policies, projects, and investments.

The National Governors Association's (NGA) Health and Dignity Task Force provides this issue brief on ways to improve long-term health care issues in America.

Eleven outstanding developments from the Americas have been selected as winners for the 2005 Urban Land Institute's first ever (ULI) Awards for Excellence: The Americas competition.

Conference proceedings and presentations from the 2006 Massachusetts Smart Growth Conference are now available online at the conference website. More than 750 people from the private, public, and non-profit sectors attended this event, co-hosted by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Planning Association.

On November 15, 2006, EPA announced five winners of the 2006 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC. This award recognizes outstanding achievement in smart growth by tribal, state, local, or regional governments in five categories: Overall Excellence, Built Projects, Policies and Regulations, Small Communities, and Equitable Development.

Audio compact discs from the 2006 New Partners for Smart Growth Conference are available for purchase. The fifth annual conference drew more than 1,200 attendees and offered dozens of seminars, symposia, workshops, and other events.

Vision Long Island hosted more than 375 leaders, experts and advocates at the 5th Annual Smart Growth Awards on June 16, 2006. The event put a spotlight on the cutting edge people, projects and policies that are shaping the future of Long Island’s landscape. Categories were based on Vision Long Island's “Principles of Smart Growth,” and included awards for green development and regional leadership.

Vision Long Island is seeking nominations for its fourth annual Smart Growth Awards. This special event will honor individuals and organizations taking leadership in advancing Smart Growth projects, policies, regulations and initiatives. Deadline for submission is February 28, 2006.

The New York State Association of REALTORS Award for Smart Growth Excellence was created to recognize the successful efforts of New York's communities to incorporate the principles of smart growth into their projects, policies and programs. Its purpose is to promote the continued advancement of smart growth in the state, in accordance with the principles adopted by REALTORS.

Good planning helps create communities of lasting value. Creating such communities takes effort, vision, and dedication.

The James River Green Building Council (JRGBC) hosted the Virginia Go Green Competition and Awards Forum on April 20, 2007. The event was created to highlight design that supports the principles of sustainability in Central Virginia.

Vision Long Island honored a dozen individuals and organizations in their 2007 Smart Growth Awards ceremony, held on June 15, 2007, at the Crest Hollow Country Club in Woodbury, New York.

The Virginia Sustainable Building Network (VSBN) announced the fourth annual Virginia Green Innovation Awards at its Annual Meeting on June 25, 2008. Each year, VSBN members are asked to nominate Green businesses, organizations, design firms, and community programs that represent ''the best Green projects or programs in Virginia.''

The Coalition for Smarter Growth will present its Sixth Annual Livable Communities Leadership Award to Congressman Gerry Connolly at an awards ceremony on February 25, 2009.

EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson presented the 2009 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement on December 1 at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. Through the awards, four communities were recognized for their comprehensive approach to improving access to affordable housing, providing more transportation options and protecting the local environment for residents.

The four recipients of the 2009 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement are:

Overall Excellence: Lancaster County Planning Commission for Envision Lancaster County. Lancaster County, in south-central Pennsylvania, is known for its historic towns and villages, and its fertile farmland. To maintain the county’s character, its diverse economy, and its natural resources for future generations, the Lancaster County Planning Commission established a countywide comprehensive growth management plan, which protects valuable farmland and historic landscapes by directing development to established towns and cities in the county.

Policies and Regulations: City of Charlotte for Urban Street Design Guidelines. As the central city in a rapidly growing metropolitan area, Charlotte, N.C., is under intense development pressures. Rather than continue the automobile-dominated development patterns of the last 50 years, Charlotte adopted Urban Street Design Guidelines to make walking, bicycling, and transit more appealing and to make the city more attractive and sustainable.

Built Projects: Chicago Housing Authority, FitzGerald Associates Architects and Holsten Real Estate Development Corporation for Parkside of Old Town. Parkside of Old Town sits on eight city blocks that were once home to a public housing complex notorious for criminal activity. The redevelopment has transformed the neighborhood by reconnecting it to downtown Chicago and tying together mixed-income housing, parks, and new shops and restaurants.

Smart Growth and Green Building: City of Tempe, Ariz. for the Tempe Transportation Center. The Tempe Transportation Center is a model for sustainable design, a vibrant, mixed-use regional transportation hub that incorporates innovative and green building elements tailored to the Southwest desert environment. The Tempe Transportation Center is a true multi-modal facility that integrates a light rail stop, the main city bus station, and paths for bicyclists and pedestrians.

The Local Government Commission (LGC) is conducting a ''Call for Session Proposals'' (CFSP) for the 2009 New Partners for Smart Growth Conference program. This process will be open from May 19 through June 25, 2008. The submittal review process will take place from early-July through late-August 2008.

The Valley Development Council, in collaboration with the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, invites you to participate in the 2009 Smart Growth Design & Reuse Competition.

Architects, designers, landscape architects, planners and students are invited to prepare concept plans for the redevelopment of three strategic sites in the Pioneer Valley, a region of Western Massachusetts defined by the Connecticut River Valley. These sites are located in Southampton, Palmer and Hadley.

The goal for this international design competition is to create a local example of sustainable development and redevelopment, and to provide a model of how communities in the region can grow smarter. With the partnerships formed through this competition process, there will be significant momentum for turning the winning concept plan idea into reality.

Deadline for submissions is January 15, 2010.

Smart Growth Vermont announces its 2009 Smart Growth Awards and Art Gibb Award Ceremony. This awards program honors projects, initiatives, and plans anywhere in the state of Vermont that demonstrate smart growth principles in action.

Metropolis's 2010 Next Generation Design Competition is now accepting entries based on the theme is One Design Fix for the Future. The competition is looking for one small (but utterly brilliant!) design fix that can be made now, and that will have a lasting postive impact on the designed environment. The competition is open to all designers and architects in practice ten years or less (including design students), and the winner will receive $10,000 to help make his or her idea a reality.

Deadline: January 29, 2010.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is now accepting applications for the 2010 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement. This competition is open to public- and private-sector entities that have successfully used smart growth principles to improve communities environmentally, socially, and economically.

The application period is open from February 8, 2010 to April 5, 2010.

Up to five awards will be given in the following categories:

February 4-6, 2010 – Seattle, WA

The 9th Annual 2010 New Partners for Smart Growth Conference in Seattle, Washington, boasted record-breaking attendance. Some 1,600 people from across the country gathered for three days of presentations, discussions, and information sharing. For more information about the conference, see www.newpartners.org.

The conference was produced by the Local Government Commission (LGC), with support form a very impressive and multi-disciplinary group of partners and sponsoring organizations, agencies, and companies. Without their collective support, this dynamic event would not have been possible. For a complete list of sponsors and cosponsors, see

The conference was produced by the Local Government Commission (LGC), with support form a very impressive and multi-disciplinary group of partners and sponsoring organizations, agencies, and companies. Without their collective support, this dynamic event would not have been possible. For a complete list of sponsors and cosponsors, visit the conference website.

PDF files of available PowerPoint presentations are now available on the conference program page at the link below. These files are available for FREE download.

Please note: some presentation files are large and may take time to download.

On February 10, 2010, HUD published an Advance Notice (75 FR 6689) announcing its intent to offer funding through competitive NOFA under its Sustainable Communities Planning Grant Program. Through the Advance Notice, HUD sought input from state and local governments, regional bodies, community development entities, and a broad range of other stakeholders on how the Sustainable Communities Planning Grant Program should be structured in order to have the most meaningful impact on regional planning for sustainable development.

HUD is publishing this new Notice to inform potential applicants of the multi-week time frame for the registration requirements that must be met before an application can be submitted, as well as the application procedures to follow once the NOFA itself is published.

HUD is using this notice to request entities interested in applying for the Sustainable Communities Planning Grant Program to notify HUD of their intent to submit an application. Providing HUD with this information will allow HUD to properly access the workload anticipated during the review process and plan accordingly to ensure timely decision-making.

If your organization is interested in applying for the Sustainable Communities Planning Grant Program, please call the HUD NOFA Information Center as soon as possible at 1-800-HUD-8929. The NOFA Information Center will ask for your organization name and address, contact name, email, and telephone number, including area code. Notification of intent to apply is not a requirement for application. If you are an eligible applicant, you may still apply – notification merely helps HUD determine staffing requirements for review and evaluation of applicants.

The full Notice is available at the link below.

In 21st Century Land Development Code from APA Planners Press, two of the nation's leading experts in land-use law and planning provide a comprehensive guide to drafting and updating land-use regulations.

The American Planning Association (APA) has announced its 2008 list of Great Neighborhoods, Great Streets, and Great Public Spaces -- in 21 states and the District of Columbia -- that offer better choices for where and how people work and live.

A Blueprint for Action was created to provide local leaders with tools to build the collaborations needed to create livable communities for people of all ages. The guide can be used as a quick-reference kit for practitioners looking for tools, resources, and best practices. It includes information based on community experiences in building local leadership and offers tools to prepare for the needs of a maturing America, drawing on the most innovative and effective practices of communities throughout the country.

This report documents how entrepreneurs, investors, and insightful communities across Michigan are preserving historic assets and reaping greater economic activity and a higher quality of life.

A Global Urban Agenda from the Urban Land Institute highlights issues discussed at ULI’s World Cities Forum in June 2005.

A Guide to Smart Growth and Cultural Resource Planning, prepared by the Wisconsin Historical Society's Division of Historic Preservation, is now available.

From the Executive Summary:
Governor Gary Locke convened the Sustainable Washington Advisory Panel in September 2002 because of the widening gap between our state’s current reality and a Washington that is equitable, healthy, and prospering. The Panel concluded that it is imperative to initiate significant changes now if we want Washington’s quality of life to improve, not diminish, over the next generation.

A Plan for Tomorrow: Re-Thinking Density to Create Stronger, Healthier Communities is a free PowerPoint presentation jointly prepared by the Urban Land Institute, the National Multi-Housing Council, and the Sierra Club, that shows how density can transform neighborhoods, and offers compelling research to allay conventional fears about density.

A Smart Growth Reader, prepared by the American Planning Association (APA), is designed as an aid to understanding the various elements that make up Smart Growth. This on-line publication draws on articles that have appeared in APA publications over the past two years, and is intended as a rich compendium of perspectives on the smart growth.

This briefing book from Grow Smart Rhode Island provides background information about issues that are critical for the state’s healthy economic and physical development, quality of life, and social well-being.

GrowSmart Maine offers this two-page fact sheet on Accessory Apartments (also called ''granny flats,'' ''accessory dwelling units'' (ADUs), ''secondary units,'' or ''single-family conversions'') that serves as both an introduction to the idea of spreading affordable housing units throughout a community while providing an improved quality of life for elderly citizens who choose to continue to live in their homes, or for families who wish to have elderly relatives live at home with them.

PolicyLink has developed Achieving Equity and Inclusion in America: Policy Principles for the Obama Administration and New Congress, a framework of principles that can guide federal decision-making to maximize the return on national investment for all Americans, especially low-income people and communities of color. These principles reflect the knowledge and experience PolicyLink has developed through its decade-long partnership with local leaders working to foster economic and social inclusion in communities across America.

The New Hampshire Office of Energy and Planning (OEP) has produced a report and website, Achieving Smart Growth in New Hampshire. This project documents how New Hampshire is changing and highlights some positive examples of development and conservation throughout the state.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, architects and urban reformers helped to defeat infectious diseases, such as cholera and tuberculosis, by improving design of buildings, streets, neighborhoods, clean water systems and parks. In the 21st century, designers can again play a crucial role in combating the most rapidly growing public health epidemics of our time: obesity and its impact on related chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and some cancers. Today, physical inactivity and unhealthy diet are second only to tobacco use as the main causes of premature death in the United States. A growing body of research suggests that evidence-based architectural and urban design strategies can increase regular physical activity and healthy eating.

The Active Design Guidelines provides architects and urban designers with a manual of strategies for creating healthier buildings, streets and urban spaces, based on the latest academic research and best practices in the field. A growing body of research suggests that evidence-based architectural and urban design strategies can increase regular physical activity and healthy eating.

The Guidelines includes:

The Active Design Guidelines was developed through a partnership of the New York City departments of Design and Construction, Health and Mental Hygiene, Transportation, City Planning and the Office of Management and Budget, working with leading architectural and planning academics, and with assistance from the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter. Other City agencies that contributed to the Guidelines include the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities, Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, Department of Buildings, Department of Parks and Recreation, School Construction Authority, Housing Preservation and Development and the Department for the Aging.

The Active Living Resource Center (ALRC) is an online resource designed to help citizens take charge in their neighborhoods and make them more physically active by making them more bicycle and pedestrian friendly. The ALRC Library provides dozens of resources that support this goal.

This web site is described as a tool, resource, idea bank and step-by step guide to Design in affordable housing.

The Canadian Province of Manitoba has launched an Age Friendly Initiative with numerous partners to address the challenges facing the growing population of seniors.

This report posits that the sprawling, automobile-dominated landscape so prevalent throughout the United States seriously limits the continued mobility and independence of older people, a reality that is of enormous consequence to the aging experience.

The National Association of Area Agencies on Aging (n4a) and Partners for Livable Communities (PLC) have launched a joint initiative to work with cities and counties over an 18-month period to facilitate a community dialogue on ''aging in place,'' and to assist community leaders in developing an action plan to ensure programs and services are in place so that communities are good places to grow old.

The U.S. EPA is inviting eligible candidates to submit applications for the Excellence in Building Healthy Communities for Active Aging award. Applications are due September 12, 2008.

50to50 from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) is a how-to resource intended to assist architects and the construction industry in moving toward the AIA's public goal of a minimum 50 percent reduction of fossil fuel consumption in buildings by 2010 and carbon neutrality by 2030.

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) Committee on the Environment (COTE) has announced winners of its 2008 ''Top Ten Green Projects.'' Each project was evaluated on ten measures, documented extensively on the COTE Web site, which include design innovation, community context and land use, longevity, bioclimatic design, water and energy conservation, materials, and indoor environment.

Did you miss the 2009 AIA convention? The American Institute of Architects is offering through its website a video stream of select presentations and workshops from the 2009 National Convention and Design Exposition.

The SDAT is a community assistance program that focuses on the principles of sustainability. SDATs will bring a team of volunteer professionals (such as architects, urban designers, planners, hydrologists, economists, attorneys, and others) to work with community decision-makers and stakeholders to help them develop a vision and framework for a sustainable future.

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) Center for Communities by Design announces the 2008 Sustainable Design Assessment Team Program (SDAT) Request for Proposals. The RFP solicits applications for inclusion in the Sustainable Design Assessment Team (SDAT) 2008 program.

The American Institute of Architects Center for Communities by Design announces the 2009 Sustainable Design Assessment Team Program Request for Proposals.

The AIA Center for Communities by Design announces the 2010 Sustainable Design Assessment Team Program Request for Proposals. The RFP solicits applications for inclusion in the Sustainable Design Assessment Team 2010 program.

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) and its Committee on the Environment (COTE) have selected the top ten examples of sustainable architecture and green design solutions that protect and enhance the environment.

Each year the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Committee on the Environment hosts a 2008 Top Ten Green Awards competition. In addition to posting award recipients and project summaries, AIA produces a webpage featuring information on the ten measures and supporting metrics used to evaluate the entries.

The American Institute of Architects Committee on the Environment has posted results from their 2008 Top Ten Green Awards.

The American Institute of Architects Committee on the Environment (AIA/COTE) invites your entry to the 2009 Top Ten Green Projects Awards.

The Alcan Prize for Sustainability is a $1 million prize that recognizes organizations demonstrating a comprehensive approach to addressing, achieving and further advancing economic, environmental and/or social sustainability. The Alcan Prize for Sustainability is one of the world’s most significant, privately funded Prizes. One Prize is awarded annually.

NOAA Coastal Services Center offers an extensive online library of information and tools for coastal development, mapping, and restoration. In Alternatives for Coastal Development: One Site, Three Scenarios, the Center examines design scenarios in terms of Smart Growth.

America 2050 is a national initiative to meet the infrastructure, economic development and environmental challenges of the nation as we prepare to add about 130 million additional Americans by the year 2050.

American Makeover is a new web-exclusive series that explores growth and development alternatives in communities across America, looking at what can be done to help our communities grow in such a way that gives us the kind of neighborhoods and choices we're increasingly looking for.

The first episode ''sounds the alarm bell on Atlanta’s sprawl.'' No one who has ever been to Atlanta will argue their status as poster child of sprawling growth, but it's encouraging that the filmmakers spend most of the short episode taking a closer look at the alternatives in Atlanta — focusing on those growing millions of people who are looking for places to live that are walkable and connected and dontt entail hour-long car commutes to work, school, or the local market.

The series is expected to include episodes of four to five more cities.

APA is a nonprofit, public interest organization representing 30,000 practicing planners, elected and appointed officials, and citizens involved in urban and rural planning issues. APA's members believe that sound planning is essential to meeting our nation's economic, environmental, and community development needs. Sixty-five percent of the members work in state and local government agencies, helping citizens define the kind of community they want to live in and developing policies, plans, and land use regulations that respond to those desires. APA is working with the SGN to disseminate ''best practice'' techniques for encouraging citizen participation, reforming state and local planning frameworks, and promoting sustainable development patterns.

Presentations from the 2004 Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations Conference are available online as PowerPoint files through the AMPO website.

The AMPO Annual Conference in Little Rock, Arkansas, October 2-4, 2007, drew close to 300 attendees from MPO's, state and federal agencies, and consulting firms. Presentations from many conference events are now available online at the AMPO website.

An Alternative Future is a comprehensive look at an alternate trend for development that would accommodate the predicted doubling of Florida's population by 2060 without changing the character of the landscape. By creating an efficient transportation infrastructure, a significant cost-savings can be realized -- up to $526 billion dollars -- over the current development trends.

Before the international Urban Age conference in Berlin, Bruce Katz, Vice President and Director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at The Brookings Institution, argued that if cities are the organizing units of the new global order, then a broad range of policies and practices at the city, national, and supra-national levels need to be reevaluated and overhauled around new spatial realities and paradigms.

Annotated Resources for Green Multifamily Rehabilitation from Local Initiatives Support Corp. (LISC) is a summary of resources available on the topic of green building/rehabilitation for multifamily homes.

With the support of the Fannie Mae Foundation, the American Planning Association (APA) has assembled more than 100 documents and articles from APA publications that examine the affordable housing problem in the U.S. and identify and evaluate various solutions.

The American Planning Association (APA) offers the Audio Conference Training Series comprised of thematic audio and visual training programs. Topics during the current series include Economic Development for Small Towns, Planning and Public Health, and Planning for Safe Growth.

With northeastern Illinois expected to grow by 1.9 million people over the next 25 years, a new vision -- one that will accommodate this anticipated growth in an efficient, coordinated and sustainable manner -- is guiding decision making around the region. This vision is a key component of the 2040 Regional Framework Plan, recipient of the 2006 Outstanding Planning Award for a Plan from the American Planning Association (APA).

The American Planning Association has created a website featuring resources and information from their 2007 National Planning Conference. Session reports, photos from various events, media coverage, and more can be found at this resource.

The American Planning Association's new report, Regional Approaches to Affordable Housing, evaluates 23 programs across the nation to find out if they actually resulted in housing production and, if so, how. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Fannie Mae Foundation, and APA funded the study.

The American Planning Association (APA) is seeking proposals for providing educational content at the 2009 APA National Planning Conference in Minneapolis, April 25–29, 2009.

The April 2007 issue of Getting Smart! focuses on three case studies of faith-based organizations and religious institutions that have been pivotal in the success of smart growth efforts.

The April 2009 Getting Smart e-newsletter features articles on energy-related topics. With the Obama Administration declaring energy a priority and investing billions of federal dollars in new and existing programs, this edition offers some ideas for broader consideration.

The Arizona Smart Growth Scorecard is a valuable tool for community self-assessment developed by a working group of the Growth Cabinet with input from public and private stakeholders. It is designed to strengthen the ability of local officials to plan for future growth and development and to adopt comprehensive strategies that address growth-related pressures. As Arizona continues to attract unprecedented population growth, all levels of government must play a role in wisely planning and managing both the challenges and opportunities that new growth and development present.

Recognizing that communities measure and track how well they are implementing smart growth and look for areas of improvement, the Growth Cabinet prepared this Scorecard to help communities assess whether they have the right tools in place to promote smart growth. Executive Order 2007-05, directed state agencies to identify how state discretionary funds might provide incentives to communities for growing smarter and technical assistance for those needing support. The intent is to provide communities, counties, and Tribal governments - small or large, rural or urban - with a simple, clear, usable means of evaluating how well prepared they are for the pressures of growth. In addition, the Scorecard can help spur action on local and regional approaches to address growth issues and provide incentives and assistance to communities wanting to effectively and efficiently manage development. Cities, towns, counties, and Tribal governments will be evaluated by the set of smart growth criteria and indicators contained within the Scorecard.

Arlington's Smart Growth Journey is a documentary film that traces the dramatic history of the past half-century of growth and development in Arlington, Virginia.

The Atlanta Regional Commission’s (ARC) Livable Centers Initiative encourages local jurisdictions to plan and implement strategies that link transportation improvements with land use development strategies to create sustainable, livable communities consistent with regional development policies.

The Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) has launched an ambitious initiative, called ''Fifty Forward: Metro Atlanta Futures Forum,'' to explore possible future scenarios for metro Atlanta and forge an action plan to ensure future livability, prosperity and sustainability.

New audio recordings are now available from three Smart Growth Speaker Series events at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. These lectures are part of a four-part series focusing on Smart Growth in Washington, D.C., which will conclude with the April 23, 2008 event celebrating 10 years of the Smart Growth Speaker Series.

The August 2007 issue of Getting Smart! focuses on one of the hottest -- no pun intended -- issues of the day: climate change. The transportation sector is one of the largest contributors of greenhouse gas emissions. To effectively reduce emissions from the transportation sector, we must reduce the number of miles U.S. residents drive; in other words, land use patterns must change. Smart growth will play a critical role in making this change happen.

The latest issue of Getting Smart! is now available for all Smart Growth Network members in the Members Section. This edition of Getting Smart! examines how the most public of places -- our community's streets -- can be transformed to serve not only vehicles but also pedestrians and cyclists.

The Home Depot Foundation’s Awards of Excellence for Sustainable Community Development recognizes public-private partnerships that have successfully developed projects and/or initiatives that promote and exemplify a more sustainable community. Truly sustainable projects take a holistic, integrated approach, whereby sustainability planning, affordable housing and the creation of green spaces and planting of trees are inextricably linked.

Projects that qualify for the Awards of Excellence in Sustainable Community Development program exhibit thoughtful construction of a neighborhood which includes green affordable housing and tree plantings and have gone beyond to address overarching community issues. These projects have contributed to creating a stronger connection among the residents and addressed many broad-scale issues, including treatment of stormwater, economic development, reducing urban heat island effect, disaster preparedness, carbon reduction strategies, abandoned and foreclosed properties, pedestrian friendliness, traffic calming, transit oriented development, and resident health and quality of life.

The Awards of Excellence go to both the cities and their non-profit partners representing the partnership that completed the local initiative. The Foundation will recognize a National Winner ($75,000 grant), National Runner-up ($25,000 grant), and up to three Honorable Mentions ($2,500 grant).

The grants are to be used at the discretion of the non-profit to further the sustainability goals of the community.

Responses are due March 31, 2010.

Four San Francisco, California Bay Area regional agencies have joined forces in a Joint Policy Committee. The Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC), and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) are working together to create complete, livable communities.

Housing located far from transit and employment centers places a heavy financial strain on working families in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan region, according to a 2009 publication from the Urban Land Institute (ULI) Terwilliger Center for Workforce Housing. Beltway Burden: The Combined Cost of Housing and Transportation in the Greater Washington, DC Metropolitan Area, documents the challenges faced by area working families who are forced to ''drive 'til they qualify'' for housing, incurring higher transportation costs that eventually erode their housing cost savings. It finds that area families are victim to combined housing and transportation costs that constitute, on average, nearly 47 percent of the area median income.

The Transportation and Land Use Coalition (TALC) has produced this report that rates 18 projects in nine counties of the San Francisco Bay area.

APA Planners Press. 1996. In this book Reid Ewing argues that the best development is both profitable and sustainable. APA Planners Press.

This lavishly illustrated, hardcover awards book profiles 48 top development projects throughout the world. Each project description includes photos, the development story, and project data and is a winner or finalist for the prestigious ULI Awards for Excellence. The annual prize is based on financial viability, the resourceful use of land, design, relevance to contemporary issues, and sensitivity to the community and environment.

Best Practices in Producing Affordable Housing, an Urban Land Institute/Fannie Mae Foundation Policy Forum held in Washington, D.C., in March 2005, sought to identify and explore current best practices and learn from companies that are doing an exemplary job of providing affordable housing. This document reports on the initial findings from that event.

Better Models for Commercial Development is a one-of-a-kind publication from The Conservation Fund that shows how communities can improve the design and siting of new commercial development.

Better Models for Development in California is a one of a kind publication for creating, maintaining and enhancing livable communities in California.

Better Models for Development on the Eastern Shore is a unique publication for improving the design and siting of new commercial development on the Eastern Shore. This booklet, co-published with the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy was written for elected officials, planning commissioners, developers and interested citizens on the Delmarva Peninsula. Better Models shows how new commercial development can be made more attractive, more efficient and more profitable.

The Sustainable Buildings Industry Council (SBIC) invites you to participate in the 2008 Beyond Green™ High-Performance Building Awards. This unique program recognizes the initiatives that shape, inform and catalyze the high-performance building market, as well as the real-world application of high-performance design and construction practices.

The City of Bridgeport and Bridgeport Regional Business Council have released BGreen 2020, a Sustainability Plan that outlines the policies and actions to be implemented in the next decade to improve the quality of life, social equity, and economic competitiveness of the city while reducing carbon emissions and increasing the community's resilience to the effects of climate change and increasing energy costs. The program management team, led by Regional Plan Association, convened the efforts of more than a hundred stakeholders in a Community Advisory Committee and working groups to develop strategies to address brownfields and land use, pedestrian and transit access, renewable energy production, and environmental protection while supporting the growth of green jobs in the region.

BGreen 2020 is the result of a public-private partnership between the City of Bridgeport and the Bridgeport Regional Business Council, a consortium of local business groups. By building on Bridgeport's existing strengths, BGreen will modernize the city's infrastructure, create wealth, intensify urban amenities, enhance environmental quality, enable revitalization without gentrification, and retain Bridgeport's historic character. Early priorities are the creation of an Energy Improvement District to support energy efficiency and production, adopting a ''Transit First'' policy, developing a plan for open space use and maintenance, expanding recycling, and protecting the region's waterways through enhanced stormwater management. A Green Collar Institute will train workers and act as an incubator for developing green industries.

More information, and a download link, can be found at the link below.

(Reprinted with permission from Regional Plan Association)

Big & Green: Toward Sustainable Architecture in the 21st Century explores five categories of issues that design and building professionals are addressing in order to reduce the deleterious environmental impact of skyscrapers and other megastructures: Energy; Light and Air; Greenery, Water and Waste; Construction; and Urbanism.

This PowerPoint presentation promotes Smart Growth principles in the Greater Washington, D.C. metro area.

The Blueprint for American Prosperity is a multi-year initiative from Brookings to promote an economic agenda for the nation that builds on the assets -- and centrality -- of America's metropolitan areas.

From 2005-2007, 1000 Friends of Oregon, the Bus Project, and more than 50 other organizations hosted a series of town hall forums in 16 locations across the state. Called ''Envision Oregon,'' these forums challenged more than 2,200 participants from over 140 towns and places in Oregon to describe their vision for Oregon's future, and to help create strategies for making that vision a reality. They also formed the foundation for Blueprint for Oregon's Future.

The Indicators Report provides high quality data and information about Boston by engaging hundreds of participants and experts in presenting data in 10 categories, drawn from the wealth of research and information generated by public agencies, civic institutions, researchers, think tanks and community-based organizations.

''Revitalizing Washington's Neighborhoods: A Vision Takes Shape,'' a new discussion paper by Alice Rivlin and others, provides a roadmap for revitalizing the District of Columbia and boosting its population by targeting development resources on key neighborhoods.

The Brookings Institute Center on Urban and Metropolitan Studies has released several reports on vacant properties and policy reforms.

The February 2009 Brownfields Policy Research Newsletter from Northeast/Midwest Institute (NEMW) includes links to recent reports and white papers plus a feature article, ''Infill, Historic Preservation, and Infrastructure Savings.''

This 2006 report from the United Kingdom's Department for Communities and Local Government outlines a plan to provide zero carbon housing for new residential construction in England by 2016.

Building Better: A Guide to America's Best New Development Projects from the Sierra Club reports on the current state of development in the United States and highlights some of the best new developments that are producing healthy neighborhoods and livable communities.

Building for the Future demonstrates the critical need for more affordable housing in San Francisco, summarizes recent affordable housing production, and underscores the benefits of new city funding to help create much-needed housing for our lowest income residents.

A Green Buildings Matrix is available from the April 2005 Zoning Practice, the American Planning Association's newsletter that helps guide you as you write and administer smart development codes.

Building Green: Overcoming Barriers in Philadelphia is a report from the Pennsylvania Environmental Council (PEC) that identifies obstacles to green building in Philadelphia and recommends solutions to dissolving those barriers.

The U.S. EPA's Aging Initiative is spearheading the multi-agency Building Healthy Communities for Active Aging Award. The The principal goal of the is to raise awareness across the nation about healthy synergies that can be achieved by communities combining Smart Growth and Active Aging concepts.

The principal goal of the Building Healthy Communities for Active Aging Award program is to raise awareness across the nation about healthy synergies that can be achieved by communities combining Smart Growth and Active Aging concepts.

The U.S. EPA's Aging Initiative website provides a wealth of information about the Agency's efforts to protect the environmental health of older persons. The Initiative's Building Healthy Communities for Active Aging Assessment Tool consists of a series of questions that address concerns for an aging population in terms of overall health, quality of life in terms of accessibility within the community -- and how smart growth practices provide solutions to these questions.

The U.S. EPA has produced a booklet for recipients of its Building Healthy Communities for Active Aging Awards 2008. Included in this booklet are details on the 2008 Achievement Award Winner, 2008 Commitment Award Winners, and 2007 BHCAA Winner Updates.

Nominations are now open for the 2009 Excellence in Building Healthy Communities for Active Aging Awards. This award from the U.S. EPA's Aging Initiative program recognizes communities for their outstanding comprehensive approaches to implementing principles of smart growth, as well as strategies that support active aging.

The U.S. EPA has announced winners of its Building Healthy Communities for Active Aging: Training and Demonstration Projects. EPA has awarded the Training Grant to the Univeristy of Maine, and the Demonstration Grant to Portland State University.

Building Healthy, High Performance Schools: A Review of Selected State and School District Initiatives illustrates policies, programs, and practices to incorporate a high-performance approach in school planning, design, and construction.

Public Works Digest Article describing the deconstruction program at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin

PolicyLink and Action! offer Building the Line to Equity: Six Steps for Achieving Equitable Transit Oriented Development in Massachusetts, a report that lays out a set of principles for achieving transit development without displacement.

Building Vibrant Communities: A Commercial and Mixed Use Handbook from the Sierra Business Council (SBC) builds on the vision set forth in the SBC's Planning for Prosperity. Historic downtowns and neighborhoods have been the social, cultural, and economic centers of Sierra communities for over a hundred years. These compact, pedestrian-friendly towns are unique to our region and have enduring value. The Sierra Business Council believes they provide an excellent model for how to plan and enhance future development while we preserve what is best from our past.

Recorded in May of 2009 in Buffalo, New York, the short film ''Built to Last'' is independent filmmaker John Paget's short film exploring the connection between New Urbanism and environmental issues.

Newsweek, May 15, 1995. Lead article introducing the new urbanist movement, principals, practitioners and vision. Also includes a set of 15 steps needed to fix the American suburb from the viewpoint of new urbanists

The Califia Sketchbook Design Competition will demonstrate what life will be like in Califia, a proposed next generation eco-city. People from around the world are invited to enter a conceptual sketch conveying their view of ''slices-of-life'' within Califia, revealing smarter ways of building, powering, and maintaining the urban fabric. The program sponsors believe that allowing for more direct public involvement in the design of future living spaces is the first step in a successful eco-city project.

On behalf of the Strategic Growth Council, the California Dept. of Conservation is administering a $22.3 million competitive planning grant program for sustainable community plans.

The primary purpose of this grant program is to implement the vision of the Governor and Legislature to foster and support development of sustainable communities. Local governments will need to adopt land use plans and integrated strategies that can transform communities and create long term prosperity. Such communities shall promote equity, strengthen the economy, protect the environment and promote healthy, safe communities.

Under SB 732, approximately $60 million will be awarded to cities, counties, Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), Joint Powers Authorities (JPAs), Regional Transportation Planning Agencies (RTPAs), and Council of Governments (COGs). The Council anticipates two or three funding cycles.

Funds will be used to encourage sustainable regional and local actions that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, promote water conservation, reduce automobile use and fuel consumption, encourage infill and compact development, protect natural resources and agricultural lands, promote public health, and revitalize urban and community centers. Proposals must help achieve state planning priorities and environmental goals, as well as promote cooperative and scale-appropriate methods and strategies that reflect the interdependence of environmental, economic and community health.

Workshops will be conducted to provide technical assistance in preparing grant applications and vetting project proposals for eligibility and competitiveness.

Applications are due by August 31, 2010.

Urbanism Down Under 2005 -- Creative Urban Futures, an international urban design conference with an Australasian focus, has issued a Call for Abstracts for their August 2005 conference.

Sustainable Buildings Industry Council (SBIC) is now soliciting submissions for their 2005 Awards Program. Entries must be submitted by Friday, October 21, 2005.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is pleased to announce that applications are now being accepted for the fifth annual National Award for Smart Growth Achievement.

The National Center for Smart Growth at the University of Maryland will grant one award in the amount of $1000 for the best masters thesis focused on urban growth and development issues completed in the 2007 academic year. Masters students in urban planning, public policy, civil engineering, public and community health, economics and finance, political science or related fields are encouraged to apply.

The International Initiative for Sustainable Built Environment (iiSBE) invites all those with experience in designing, building or operating high performance buildings to take part in the Sustainable Building Challenge 2007-2008. SBC08 is a continuation of the Green Building Challenge process that began in 1996 and has since engaged more than 20 countries in project assessments, displayed at GBC'98, SB2000, SB02 and SB05.

The Centre of Urban Planning and Environmental Management (CUPEM), The University of Hong Kong, in association with ERP Environment, have announced the 12th Annual International Sustainable Development Research Conference 2006 will be held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, Hong Kong on April 6-8, 2006.

The Local Government Commission is conducting a ''Call for Program Ideas'' for the 2008 New Partners for Smart Growth Conference program. This process will be open from June 6th through July 11th, 2007. The submittal review process will take place from mid-July through late-September 2007, and those selected for inclusion in the final program will be notified by late September.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has received requests from communities and universities for help in developing model courses that incorporate smart growth into hands-on, applied course offerings.

Sterling College recently began to renovate its facilities and dorms to make these historic Vermont buildings more energy efficient. In keeping with the mission of the college, it was apparent that this development should be done in an ecologically sustainable way.

The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) presented its Campus Sustainability Leadership Awards on September 7, 2007, at the 7th biennial Greening of the Campus conference, ''Partnering for Sustainability: Enabling a Diverse Future,'' held at Ball State University September 6-8, 2007, in Muncie, Indiana.

The Indiana University Task Force on Campus Sustainability has released the Campus Sustainability Report, a collective work of more than 100 IU faculty, staff, and students who have been engaged, over the past six months, in developing a sustainability plan for the IU-Bloomington campus.

Corporate Knights Magazine has issued its 2009 Sustainable Cities Report, the third annual report detailing which Canadian cities have the smallest environmental footprint.

The Charter of the New Urbanism is the guiding document of the new urbanist movement. Although it offers an encompassing vision of sustainable urbanism from the scale of the region to the block and building, three leading CNU members, including two who had a central role in drafting the original Charter, undertook an effort to clarify and detail the relationship between New Urbanism and sustainability. The resulting document, The Canons of Sustainable Architecture and Urbanism, is designed to serve as a set of operating principles for human settlement that reestablish the relationship between the art of building, the making of community, and the conservation of our natural world.

Technical Preservation Services (TPS) helps home owners, preservation professionals, organizations, and government agencies by publishing printed pamphlets and books -- easy-to-read guidance on preserving, rehabilitating and restoring historic buildings.

Case Studies for Transit-Oriented Development, a report prepared for Local Initiatives Support Corp. by Reconnecting America, is a short summary of the TOD tools that are used by communities all across the country.

The New Jersey Smart Growth Gateway, a project of New Jersey Future, is an online resource to provide the information necessary to begin implementing Smart Growth Strategies in their communities. Included on this website are links to on- and off-site case studies from a variety of organizations.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) facilitates a Listserv that addresses issues related to health and the built environment. An e-newsletter that includes related news articles, latest studies, and updates on conferences and events related to livability is sent to all subscribers once a month.

Founded in 1978, CNT invents and develops tools and methods for sustainable development. CNT is working with the SGN to promote technical assistance and to enhance regional cooperation in South Florida. It is also working with the Surface Transportation Policy Project and the Natural Resources Defense Council to develop and implement location-efficient mortgages, which take into account the transportation efficiency of a property's location, making home ownership more affordable for properties located closer to public transportation. CNT has organized a coalition of 140 groups in the Chicago region to develop a long-range transportation plan that promotes smart growth. It has also led the way in using transit-oriented development as a redevelopment strategy in an urban setting, and it has created a financial intermediary to promote inner-city commercial development around transit.

Center for Sustainable Communities, part of the National Association of Counties (NACo) website, provides a forum for county officials to work with other government leaders, the private sector, and communities to develop policies and programs that lead to economic enhancement, environmental stewardship and social well being -- the three pillars of sustainable communities.

The Central Florida Regional Indicators Report 2005 establishes a regional key indicator system that not only measures progress in the myregion priority areas but indicates the region’s success in becoming less fragmented and more coordinated.

The Century Commission for a Sustainable Florida was established by the Governor and Legislature of Florida to envision the future of Florida -- to help citizens and state leaders prepare for a continued increase in population and to craft a plan that meets the challenges and opportunities this presents. This First Annual Report lays the foundation for the creation of a sustainable Florida.

CEOs for Cities is a membership-based national network of urban leaders dedicated to creating next generation cities that hold the answers to many of the challenges our nation faces. Through its website, members and visitors can keep current on events, publications and projects, meetings, and more.

Forward Scotland is currently developing and looking for partners for Champions for Sustainable Communities. Originally launched in 2008, this is an award that recognizes the achievements of individuals across society who have lead the way in community development with the highest regard for sustainable development principles.

As the nation looks to make significant new federal investments in infrastructure, Changing Metropolitan America: Planning for a Sustainable Future, a new publication from the Urban Land Institute, outlines strategies for building and maintaining infrastructure that fosters sustainable cities and metropolitan areas.

The Chicago Climate Action Plan describes the major effects climate change could have on the city and suggests how all city residents can work together to address those challenges.

Center for Neighborhood Technology recently helped to co-author Chicago's Guide to Completing an Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy, a guide that will help cities and counties to develop a long-term and sustainable energy efficiency and conservation plan.

Smart Growth America has released Choosing Our Community's Future, a guidebook developed to assist communities in shaping the growth and development of their neighborhoods, towns and regions.

CitiesGoGreen is a project focused on answering the question, ''How can cities and other local governments become sustainable as quickly and effectively as possible?'' With both an online and offline presence -- the project includes a digital and a print magazine, distributed with the intent to encourage effective movement by cities and other local governments toward sustainability.

The Citistates Group is a network of journalists, speakers and civic leaders focused on building competitive, equitable and sustainable 21st century metropolitan regions.

The City of Portland's Green Investment Fund (GIF) is designed to help offset the incremental costs of demonstration commercial, residential, industrial and mixed-use building projects in Portland that achieve a high level of environmental performance through multi-faceted design, progressive technologies, and best practices.

When your city is seeking solutions, avoid reinventing the wheel by using the City Practice Resources compiled by the staff of the National League of Cities. Four City Practice Resources are now available: City Practice Online Database, City Practices Briefs, Municipal Action Guides, and the Municipal Reference Service Inquiry Service.

The Climate Neutral Campus Report contains peer-reviewed white papers, case studies, executive interviews and vendor profiles that share strategies, challenges and solutions for higher education institutions that are striving for climate neutrality.

''Success Stories from our Cities and Counties'' is a project of the Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network Climate Protection Task Force. Formed in May 2007, the Joint Venture Public Sector Climate Task Force includes representatives from every city and county in Silicon Valley, plus several special districts and representatives from Pacific Gas and Electric and SunPower.

Climate protection is one of the four key goals of the World Resources Institute (WRI), and the Climate, Energy and Transport section of its website deals with the topic of climate change on a global scale.

Climate@CNU is the Congress for the New Urbanism's (CNU's) Low-Carbon Urbanism Campaign, which emphasizes low-carbon neighborhoods and high-quality living.

Sim Van der Ryn became the 10th recipient of the Athena Award when the the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) honored him at its Sustainable Communities 2008 conference in September 2008. Van der Ryn earned an international reputation as the ''father of the green building'' during his tenure as California State Architect during then Governor Jerry Brown's administration.

The Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) has honored 19 professional, student, and faculty projects with in their 2006 Charter Awards competition.

The Congress for the New Urbanism announces the recipients of its 2007 Charter Awards, the annual prize honoring the best of the New Urbanism. The 20 winning professional submissions and 5 student/faculty submissions were chosen by a seven-member jury of distinguished urbanists in March 2007.

The Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) is accepting nominations for its 2007 Charter Awards, recognizing achievements in design, planning, and development that meet the exacting standards of the Charter of the New Urbanism.

Are you looking for ideas on how other communities are successfully promoting walkable, neighborhood-based development? The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) offers a Project Database that features dozens of new urbanist developments from throughout the United States and other countries.

The Congress for New Urbanism offers the CNU XIV Multimedia Toolkit, a collection of materials from sessions and events at the 2006 CNU Congress. The Toolkit includes audio and video from nearly 50 Congress sessions, a similar number of slideshows, and reports from the correspondents who covered the Congress for the online Daily NUws.

The Congress for the New Urbanism invites academic paper submissions for presentation at CNU XVI in Austin, Texas from April 3-6, 2008. Submissions are welcome on a range of issues and disciplines related to New Urbanism. Selection will be based on the paper's contribution to critical discussion and practice of New Urbanism and for synergies within sessions. Summaries of research results are particularly encouraged.

The Coalition for Smarter Growth will host its Tenth Anniversary Celebration November 14, 2007 in Washington, DC at the True Reformer Building, with a reception, silent auction, and presentation of the 2007 Capital Region Visionary Awards.

GreenReportCard.org is the first website to provide in-depth sustainability profiles for hundreds of colleges in all 50 U.S. States and Canada. Its College Sustainability Report Card is the only independent evaluation of campus and endowment sustainability activities at colleges and universities in the United States and Canada.

The Colorado Governor's Awards for Downtown Excellence is an annual program that recognizes the progress being made in revitalizing Colorado's historic downtown and neighborhood business districts and the contributions these districts are making to Colorado's quality of life and economy.

This commentary in the Springfield (MO) News-Leader argues that Springfield's economic resilience depends on the city setting a statewide example of growth management in the Show Me State.

The Commonwealth Capital (CC) policy of the Office for Commonwealth Development (OCD) coordinates Massachusetts capital spending programs that affect development patterns. The state's goal is to invest in projects that are consistent with OCD's Sustainable Development Principles and partner with municipalities seeking to advance the Commonwealth's development and resource protection interests.

Honoring smart growth design, cutting-edge community development, and progressive urban and rural planning in Pennsylvania, the Commonwealth Design Awards recognize design excellence and responsible development in Pennsylvania.

Through the Collaborative Science and Technology Network for Sustainability (CNS), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development (ORD) is seeking applications proposing innovative regional projects that apply science to decision-making to address a stated problem or opportunity relating to sustainability.

From the website: Communities by Design is the first in a series of AIA publications addressing livable communities from the architect's point of view. It is meant to stake out the AIA's position and get people to think of architects as integral to livability issues.

Built Works, from the American Institute of Architects' (AIA) Center for Communities by Design, is a web resource that demonstrates the expertise architects contribute to community design. Featured projects on Built Works serve as a community design resource and demonstrate the positive impact of thoughtful community design and civic engagement in our nation's communities.

Sustainable community development affects our people, our environment, and our economy. Communities of Tomorrow will make Regina, Saskatchewan a world leader in environmental sustainability, community development and technology commercialization.

The Community Image Survey from the Local Government Commission (LGC) is a tool for helping decision-makers and their constituents address community design, land use and transportation issues. It uses visual images to help participants evaluate their existing environment and envision their community's future. Tailored for the needs of each community, the survey provides a foundation for planning and implementation efforts.

Community participation and stakeholder involvement play an essential role in successful brownfield development, as dozens of success stories attest. Yet historically, community participation in federally influenced redevelopment activities has been adversarial.

The City and County of Honolulu, Hawaii, offers a Community Revitalization Unit, providing information, technical support, and technical assistance for communities and organizations within communities that wish to implement projects, programs and activities that will be a positive influence for that community.

The Summer 2005 edition of On Common Ground from the National Association of Realtors turns its focus to revitalization: success stories of rejuvenation in urban areas and inner-ring suburbs.

CommunityViz® GIS software for land-use planning from Placeways is designed to help people visualize, analyze, and communicate about important land-use decisions. CommunityViz® community planning software provides a real–time interactive environment of 3D visuals, intelligent maps and dynamic analysis tools.

Version two of the Compendium of Sustainable Development Indicator Initiatives is now available online. Use this searchable directory to find initiatives based on location, type, issue areas, and more. Search for topics including quality of life,housing, and transporation.

CNU is a collaboration of professionals working to reform North America's urban growth patterns. CNU encourages restoration of existing urban centers, reconfiguration of sprawling suburbs into communities of real neighborhoods and diverse districts, conservation of natural environments, and preservation of the built legacy. It works with governmental agencies and neighborhood activists to shape federal, state, and local policy and to promote the importance of neighborhood vitality, place-specific investments, and physical design. CNU is currently collaborating with the SGN to develop a workbook on strategies for infill development, to produce a series of fact sheets on smart growth, and to identify barriers to financing New Urbanist development.

The Conservation Fund is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting America's land legacy. The fund purchases and protects land--almost 2 million acres since 1985. It also assists local communities, private land owners, and government agencies with a variety of programs that balance conservation with economic development. Current efforts involve sustainable forestry, ecotourism, greenway development, battlefield protection, watershed sensitive design, and community visioning.

The Construction Waste Management Database contains information on companies that haul, collect and process recyclable debris from construction projects.

Planetizen announces the release of Contemporary Debates in Urban Planning, a new book featuring thought-provoking commentary and insights from the some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the field.

Counties and Residential Green Building Standards is a fact sheet from the National Association of Counties (NACo) that provides an introduction to green buildings and an overview of green building programs, with examples and links from throughout the United States.

Creating Great Neighborhoods highlights the success of nine community led efforts to create vibrant neighborhoods through density. Building great dense places with good design is not just an abstract theory -- it is a practical approach to growth that is being used in diverse places across the country.

Creating Great Places is an initiative of the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) that helps governors design and implement state growth and physical development strategies that promote healthy, economically competitive and sustainable communities.

Creating Great Town Centers and Urban Villages from the Urban Land Institute (2008) is a book that describes the inside story and details on how town centers were developed, what makes them special, and provides facts on costs, rents, land uses, and more.

The Creating Livable Places website is provided by the Southern California Association of Governments to promote more livable communities. The site includes ten case studies of regional communities that have made efforts to become livable communities. The site also provides information and resources related to transportation planning, transit, and growth visioning. A calendar of events and list of related links are also available at the site.

The 16-page brochure from the National Multi Housing Council takes on the conventional wisdom about housing preferences and is recommended for use with local planning and zoning boards or to support state and local advocacy efforts.

In Creating Value: Smart Development and Green Design, a new book from the Urban Land Institute, architect Vernon Swaback argues convincingly that financial success in real estate development will increasingly require design that is smarter, greener, and more sustainable.

Crossroads Hamlet Village Town broke new ground by offering specific design guidance to planners, developers, and others involved in laying out, regulating, and reviewing proposals for “traditional neighborhoods.'' This new 2004 edition addresses many particulars of residential site design and the use of open space, parks, squares, greenways, and greenbelts.

The December 2008 issue of Getting Smart! is now available for all Smart Growth Network members in the Members Section.

Do you have a smart growth project on the horizon? Consider submitting an application for either preliminary or final recognition by the Delaware Valley Smart Growth Alliance.

To be eligible, the project must be located in Eastern or Central Pennsylvania (including Dauphin County), Southern New Jersey (including Mercer County and south) or Delaware, and not yet under construction.

The Delaware Valley Smart Growth Alliance is a collaborative initiative of more than 200 government, private sector and non-profit organizations in the tri-state region. We support and promote good smart growth projects at the earliest stages by helping them get approved at the local level. Each quarter, applications are reviewed by an independent jury of architects, planners, developers, builders, bankers, engineers, and other related disciplines. Projects recognized to be in compliance with the DVSGA's published smart growth criteria receive a letter of endorsement and an offer of testimony before local approval authorities.

DVSGA recognizes projects that will foster regional growth and redevelopment in a manner that achieves important economic, environmental and quality of life objectives. By highlighting the potential of smart growth projects to add value to the region, the DVSGA hopes to encourage developers, business organizations, citizen groups and elected officials to strive for smart growth solutions.

To date, the DVSGA has granted preliminary and/or full recognition to 26 projects, including most recently a group of affordable infill townhomes in downtown Norristown that will soon be under construction.

Download an application, as well as the criteria and the list of more than 200 supporting organizations and companies and examples of recognized projects, at the link below.

The application deadline for the current round is September 1, 2010.

The Delaware Valley Smart Growth Alliance jury provides on its website a list of project applications as good examples of smart growth development in the region. In July 2008 the Alliance recognized University Place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The Delaware Valley Smart Growth Alliance jury provides on its website a list of project applications as good examples of smart growth development in the region. Projects receiving preliminary recognition in 2007 include Mountain Manor, Smithfield Township, Monroe County, Pennsylvania; and Ellis Preserve Town Center, Newtown Square, Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

The Delaware Valley Smart Growth Alliance has added to its list of recognized smart growth projects: Kardon Ponds in Chester County, Pennsylvania; and Zurbrugg Mansion Redevelopment in Burlington County, New Jersey.

The Delaware Valley Smart Growth Alliance (DVSGA), an initiative of various government, private sector and non-profit organizations in the Greater Philadelphia tri-state region, offers a free educational PowerPoint slide show on its web site.

The Delaware Valley Smart Growth Alliance (DVSGA) is an initiative of various government, private sector and non-profit organizations in the Greater Philadelphia tri-state region encompassing Southeastern Pennsylvania, Southern New Jersey, and Delaware. The DVSGA promotes smart growth projects by recognizing proposed projects prior to development approval.

The Delaware Valley Smart Growth Alliance jury provides on its website a list of project applications as good examples of smart growth development in the region. Projects recognized in 2006 include Bell Point in Sussex County, Delaware, and Pembroke North in Radnor Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

This paper will provide a compelling argument for municipalities to pursue means of developing integrated approaches in the development of services and infrastructure.

Urban Land Institute. 2000. Fourteen case studies showcase developments of small lot subdivisions, accessory units, housing in new urbanists communities, higher-density and transit-oriented development, mixed-income and mixed housing types, infill, and adaptive use.

This four-page fact sheet from the Local Government Commission that discusses how zoning, codes, and designs have an immediate effect on the safety -- and security -- of multi-family dwellings and neighborhoods.

DesignShare announces the 8th Annual International Awards Program for Innovative Learning Environments. The Design Awards program is the most in-depth, researched body of case studies of innovative learning environments in the world.

Developing Around Transit from the Urban Land Institute breaks new ground by going beyond the typical formula of a master-planned mix of retail, offices, and housing to show a variety of ways to tap the vast prospects of undeveloped and underdeveloped areas around transit stations, whether large scale or small scale, downtown or suburban.

Based on the largest survey of multifamily housing properties in the industry, Dollars & Cents of Multifamily Housing provides the benchmarks you need to compare properties to evaluate investments, and to prepare appraisals.

''For so long we were floundering and taking ad hoc measures, but the minute I understood what a downtown plan really was I said 'We need one of those!' As it turned out, it was the most fantastic vehicle I've ever seen,'' said Susan Moffat-Thomas of New Bern, North Carolina. Her hometown got a much-needed shot in the arm from a good downtown plan. Does yours need a similar boost?

Philip L. Walker, an experienced downtown-planning consultant, offers practical tips for preserving a sense of place, improving fiscal efficiency, and enhancing quality of life in Downtown Planning for Smaller and Midsized Communities.

Planners and revitalization officials will learn how to address physical components of the downtown, as well as economic development. Walker, an experienced downtown-planning consultant, also explains how to develop an organization to implement a downtown plan; how federal, state, and local policies may influence the planning process; and how to fund a downtown revitalization effort.

The Planning Commissioners Journal is the nation's principal publication designed for citizen planners, including (but certainly not limited to) members of local planning commissions and zoning boards. ''Downtowns and Town Centers'' is an index of journal articles on downtown topics such as Farmers' Markets, Historic Preservation Ordinances, Public Buildings, Parking, and more.

Driven to Action encourages communities to reshape urban areas by helping to set the rules and making plans for sustainable cities.

EcoDensity is a concept being discussed with the Vancouver community. In brief, EcoDensity is an acknowledgement that high quality and strategically located density can make Vancouver more sustainable, livable and affordable.

Ecological Design and Building Schools is the first and only directory of ecological design and building schools in North America, featuring an annotated listing of schools and educational centers that offer top programs in ecological building design and construction.

The goal of this manual is to illustrate how development objectives and natural resource protection needs within a high-growth area can be addressed through the physical design of residential projects.

Published December 2001. 42 pages; available online as a PDF document at the resource link below.

Ecological Riverfront Design puts forth a new vision for the nation's urban riverfronts and provides a set of planning and design principles that will allow communities to reclaim urban river edges in the most ecologically sound and economically viable manner possible.

Economic development success and smart growth can go hand-in-hand. The International Economic Development Council's (IEDC's) Economic Development and Smart Growth presents eight case studies on communities that incorporated smart growth principles in their development projects and have experienced economic development improvements in the form of increased tax revenue, more jobs, higher income levels, downtown revitalization, business growth, and other indicators of economic success.

Elder Friendly Communities is the third component of the Successful Aging Initiative of the Cleveland Foundation, a multi-phased program that supports and promotes the assets and positive aspects of aging. The Successful Aging Initiative is focused on establishing elder-friendly communities, lifelong learning and development centers, and increased prospects for civic engagement, including meaningful volunteering and post-retirement employment opportunities.

The National Association of Counties (NACo) Electronic Green Government Network is a source for information on all things green for county officials, staff, and public and private companies with an interest in learning about county activities in this area.

This new book provides a refreshing look at how American cities are leading the way toward greener, cleaner, and more sustainable forms of economic development.

In Emerald Cities, Joan Fitzgerald shows how in the absence of a comprehensive national policy, cities like Chicago, New York, Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle have taken the lead in addressing the interrelated environmental problems of global warming, pollution, energy dependence, and social justice. Cities are major sources of pollution but because of their population density, reliance on public transportation, and other factors, Fitzgerald argues that they are uniquely suited to promote and benefit from green economic development. For cities facing worsening budget constraints, investing in high-paying green jobs in renewable energy technology, construction, manufacturing, recycling, and other fields will solve two problems at once, sparking economic growth while at the same time dramatically improving quality of life.

Fitzgerald also examines how investing in green research and technology may help to revitalize older industrial cities and offers examples of cities that don't make the top-ten green lists such as Toledo and Cleveland, Ohio and Syracuse, New York. And for cities wishing to emulate those already engaged in developing greener economic practices, Fitzgerald shows which strategies will be most effective according to each city's size, economic history, geography, and other unique circumstances. But cities cannot act alone, and Fitzgerald analyzes the role of state and national government policy in helping cities create the next wave of clean technology growth.

Lucid, forward-looking, and guided by a level-headed optimism that clearly distinguishes between genuine progress and exaggerated claims, Emerald Cities points the way toward a sustainable future for the American city.

Emerging Trends in Real Estate from the Urban Land Institute is considered the most comprehensive annual forecast available on all categories of the commercial real estate industry.

This translation paper from the Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities contends there is much to be gained by expanding the smart growth movement to include greater attention on energy. Through greater use of energy efficient design and renewable energy sources, the smart growth movement could better achieve its goals of environmental protection, economic security and prosperity, and community livability.

In Energy Benefits of Urban Infill Developments, a report from the Northeast-Midwest Institute, sustainable urban redevelopment is shown to be a potential major source of greenhouse gas reduction.

School Operations and Maintenance, a 130-page guide from Rebuild America, offers not only strategies for maintaining facilities, but also opportunities for reducing energy costs and increasing energy efficiency at existing schools.

Each year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) honor organizations that have made outstanding contributions to protecting the environment through energy efficiency in the Energy Star Awards. On April 1, 2008, the EPA and DOE honored award winners at the 2008 ENERGY STAR Awards Ceremony in Washington, DC.

The ENERGY STAR Challenge is a national call-to-action to improve the energy efficiency of America's commercial and industrial buildings by 10 percent or more. Whether you're associated with a small school or a large corporation, a local government or a national association, a community hospital or a hotel group, a manufacturing plant or an architecture firm -- you can be part of the ENERGY STAR Challenge and help improve the energy efficiency of America's commercial and industrial buildings by 10 percent or more.

Each year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) honor organizations that have made outstanding contributions to protecting the environment through energy efficiency. Award winners will be recognized at the ENERGY STAR Awards Ceremony on March 31, 2009, in Washington, DC.

Target Finder from the U.S. EPA's Energy Star program can help you set realistic energy performance goals and receive an energy rating for design projects. By setting and achieving superior energy performance goals, architects can help their clients prevent greenhouse gas emissions associated with burning fossil fuels.

This new report focuses on economies in transition—economies that are threatened by the consequences of environmental changes. The report explores how key civic leaders, faced with the challenge of ensuring the future strength of their economies, have employed creative new agendas that not only help reverse the effects of environmental degradation but also leverage the occasion for valuable economic gain.

While national debates rage over which production methods will lead to a stronger, more sustainable environment, and while research and development teams struggle to produce the next revolutionary technology, it is on the local level that incredible progress is being made in advancing sustainability measures beyond rhetoric. City governments and grassroots activists are often the most obvious players, but there is a powerful—and perhaps unexpected—player in the green arena that is leading the charge in cutting emissions and conserving energy while boosting regional economies: the business community.

These activities are not wild expansions of their mission, but are essential to fulfilling it. Businesses that emit little emissions and consume fewer resources are the stronger, leaner and more agile businesses of America’s future and as the organizations that work to support economic development and improve local quality of life, many chambers of commerce have dedicated themselves to aiding in the success of green businesses. The ingenuity and forward thinking exemplified by the chambers highlighted here are the first bold steps toward a more sustainable and robust American economy.

The report provides tells stories of entrepreneurship and success—stories of chambers of commerce throughout the country instituting green business recognition programs, working to attract clean industries, creating green jobs, and providing resources to local businesses to implement more sustainable practices.

Enterprise Green Communities is offering several grants to help cover the costs of planning and implementing green components of affordable housing developments, as well as tracking their costs and benefits.

The Enterprise Resource Database is an extensive library of community-based resources from the Enterprise Foundation. Database categories include regional and neighborhood planning, housing, community safety, finance, and community building.

Community Transportation Magazine. January/February 1999. Meet transit entrepreneur Barry Goodman, president of the Goodman Corp., in Houston, Texas, and an expert in transit and community development. He sees the future of community and public transportation as tied to its ability to create livable neighborhoods -- and he knows how to get it done.

This study conducted for NRDC, in cooperation with the United States Environmental Protection Agency, suggests that the environmental benefits of smart growth are real and can be measured. The study focuses on the Metro Square neighborhood in Sacramento, California, and is one of the first to examine a fully completed and occupied development.

This new study (also conducted for NRDC in cooperation with EPA) continues that research by comparing two neighborhoods in Nashville, Tennessee, and suggests that the combination of better transportation accessibility and a modest increase in land-use density can produce measurable benefits even when both sites are automobile-oriented and suburban in character.

Built Environment is a collection of articles from Environmental Health Perspectives, a peer-reviewed open access journal dedicated to the effect of the environment on human health.

For nearly three decades, the Environmental Law Institute has played a pivotal role in shaping the fields of environmental law, policy, and management, domestically and abroad. Today, ELI is an internationally recognized, independent research and education center. The Environmental Law Institute (ELI) Sustainable Use of Land Program is an on-going collaborative program devoted to promoting the sustainable use of urban, suburban, and rural land at the state and local levels. ELI works in collaboration with partners to formulate and implement options for overcoming barriers to sustainable land use found in local,state, and federal law, while developing creative alternatives to promote sound economic, community, environmental, transportation, public infrastructure and other strategies.

Environmental Law Institute uses sustainability as an organizing principle to develop new strategies for the protection of land, water, and biological resources. ELI’s Sustainability and Resource Protection Programs improve our nation’s laws, policies, and institutions. Integrating environmental laws, tax laws, development laws, and other tools. ELI works with state, local, and federal agencies, citizen groups, non-profit organizations, and corporate partners to develop effective solutions to problems of land and resource use.

Environmental Research and Education Needs: An Agenda for a New Administration is report from the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE), published in December 2008, that organizes the recommendations relating to research and education policy from NCSE's first eight national conferences (2000-2008). It identifies research needed to improve scientific knowledge, and education needed to improve public understanding, professional capacity and a strong workforce.

Randall Arendt's work has shaped a generation of planners, designers, and landscape architects. In Envisioning Better Communities, he brings his insights to a broader public, with a profusely illustrated demonstration of how local officials, planning commissioners, and everyday citizens can work to make their communities more attractive, more habitable, and more sustainable.

Despite the widespread acceptance of good design and planning principles throughout the professions, too many of our towns and rural areas remain needlessly ugly and inefficient. In side by side comparisons of similar places and kinds of buildings, Arendt shows that we need not live amid sprawling, characterless visual blight. Simple design choices and effective municipal decisions can have tremendous impacts on the quality of our communities.

Written in Arendt's well-known clear, accessible, nontechnical style, this book creates a sense of hope for those who face the everyday challenges of working with developers and landowners to create places that make economic, environmental, and aesthetic sense. Arendt shows us that with diligence, thoughtfulness, and care, we can make our communities better in countless ways.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) invite submissions to the 6th Annual P3 Awards: A National Student Design Competition for Sustainability.

A new grant RFP issued by the U.S. EPA's Development, Community, and Environment Division seeks to bring together emergency response officials, local government officials, transportation experts, and developers to engage in a problem-solving process around the issue of simultaneously meeting the needs for emergency response with the design of smart growth streets. The goal is to create a solution or set of solutions that have the endorsement of these multiple interests and will be applicable nationally across the U.S. and/or in significant regions of the country. The RFP will also support outreach efforts to educate relevant stakeholders nationally.

On November 17, EPA announced five winners of the 2004 National Awards for Smart Growth Achievement at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC. This Award recognizes outstanding achievement in smart growth by tribal, local, or regional governments in five categories: Overall Excellence, Built Projects, Policies and Regulation, Community Outreach and Education, and Small Communities.

The U.S. EPA has awarded $420,000 to 42 student teams for the 2006-2007 academic year to research and develop cutting-edge, sustainable solutions to environmental challenges.

EPA has produced two videos highlighting some of the recent success in green building technology. Both videos focus on green buildings that reduce the effects of storm water runoff on the quality of downstream receiving waters.

The EPA and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have agreed to work together to help coastal communities grow in ways that benefit the economy, public health, and the environment.

The U.S. EPA's Smart Growth Implementation Assistance Program (SGIA) is an annual, competitive solicitation open to state, local, regional, and tribal governments (and non-profits that have partnered with a governmental entity) that want to incorporate smart growth techniques into their future development.

EPA developed the Smart Growth Implementation Assistance (SGIA) program in response to communities' requests for help in achieving their development goals. Through this program, EPA provides technical assistance from private-sector experts to help communities find the best tools and resources to plan for growth in ways that sustain environmental and economic progress and create a high quality of life.

Equitable Renewal: Ten Points to Guide Rebuilding in the Gulf Coast Region is an outline of steps from PolicyLink to help ensure that restoration of hurricane-damage communities is fair and just.

Across the country, local governments are searching for ways to create vibrant communities that attract jobs, foster economic development, and provide attractive places for people to live, work, and play. But many are discovering that their own land development codes and ordinances often get in the way of achieving these goals, and they may not have the resources or expertise to make the specific regulatory changes that will create more sustainable communities.

In response to this need, EPA's Smart Growth Program convened a panel of national smart growth code experts to identify the topics in local zoning codes that are essential to creating the building blocks of smart growth. The resulting document, Essential Smart Growth Fixes for Urban and Suburban Zoning Codes, presents the panel's initial work. This document explores 11 ''Essential Fixes'' that address the most common barriers local governments face in implementing smart growth. These actions are organized as modest adjustments, major modifications, or wholesale changes -- giving communities options based on their political will, financial resources, and organizational capacity.

This tool does not include model language, codes or ordinances. It can, however, help communities evaluate their existing codes and ordinances and apply that information to create more sustainable comunities. It is an evolving document that will be regularly revised and updated, and is intended to spark a larger conversation about the tools and information local governments need to revise their land development regulations.

The European Urban Knowledge Network (EUKN) shares knowledge and experience on tackling urban issues. Fifteen EU Member States, EUROCITIES, the URBACT Programme and the European Commission participate in this European initiative.

''Smart Growth on the Ground'' is an innovative program to change the way that development is done in British Columbia by creating real, built examples of smart growth. This unique program helps BC communities to prepare more sustainable neighborhood plans -- including land use, transportation, urban design, and building design plans. Extensive follow-up ensures that the plans become reality.

PolicyLink produced this report on housing affordability for California that analyzes possible revenue sources, surveys housing trust funds in 28 other states, and draws from best practices across the nation to provide a blueprint for providing affordable housing.

Facing the Future believes in the transformative power of widespread, systemic education to improve lives and communities, both locally and globally. The organization's positive, solutions-based programming is designed by and for teachers, and effectively brings critical thinking about global issues to students in every walk of life.

Fertile Ground is a report on the first year of Green Communities, a five-year, $555 million initiative to build more than 8,500 environmentally healthy homes for low-income families. The report states that the initiative exceeded expectations in its first year, as a diverse array of partners embraced the initiative’s holistic, cost-effective approach to sustainable development in low-income communities.

The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MTC) has produced a two-page chart that provides information on funding resources for building green affordable housing.

The Florida Department of Health (FDOH) offers a smart growth presentation that provides an overview of smart growth in the context of public health. This resource emphasizes the connection between public health and the built environment, and how following Smart Growth principles can benefit Florida.

1000 Friends of Florida has compiled this list of local advocacy groups that are dealing with the impacts of growth on a daily basis. This online resource contains contact information for more than a dozen organizations.

The Vision was created in 2002 by individuals and organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area who believe that the region's population growth can be accommodated in a sustainable way. The Vision calls for the Bay Area to develop as a ''network of neighborhoods,'' where future growth is concentrated near transit and in the existing communities that surround the San Francisco Bay. Focusing Our Vision is the most recent effort to realize the Vision. Referred to as FOCUS, the program's nickname is fitting because it requires a FOCUS of efforts, resources and housing development in areas that will promote the long-term sustainability of the region.

For the Greener Good is a public series that affirms the National Building Museum's commitment to environmental sustainability. It calls on experts from diverse backgrounds to investigate links between environmental sustainability and design, public health, energy policy, bioscience, infrastructure, education, and even popular culture.

Form-Based Codes: Implementing Smart Growth from the Local Government Commission is an eight-page fact sheet that discusses this innovative approach to regulating development and includes case studies and tips for preparing and administering a form-based code.

This report from the Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities presents 19 stories from foundations that demonstrate the strategic use of varying types of investments a foundation can make toward supporting more thoughtful real estate investment in a region as well as how a foundation might approach such investment.

Commissioned by the Funders' Network, From Wall Street to Your Street: New Solutions for Smart Growth Finance reassess the current methods for smart growth finance and sketches out two different ''fixes'' for the problem of financing smart growth.

To acknowledge and celebrate its 10th Anniversary in 2009, the Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities commissioned Looking Back: Influencing, Networking, Facilitating, a retrospective on the efforts undertaken by the Network and its members over the past ten years.

To acknowledge and celebrate its 10th Anniversary in 2009, the Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities Looking Forward: Perspectives on Future Opportunities for Philanthropy, a compilation of essays from leading thinkers in the movement for smarter growth policies and practices that challenge philanthropy to think about its role over the next ten years.

Getting Density Right from the Urban Land Institute is a book that describes tools used to better support compact development, including visioning, planning, and new regulations. Case studies profile the experiences of eight communities, the policy tools they used to encourage compact development, and the development projects built using the new regulations.

How do you create a flourishing, livable place appealing to residents and visitors of all ages, incomes, and backgrounds? Offering a ground-breaking alternative to uniform, ''cookie-cutter'' urban designs, Getting Real About Urbanism is a book that describes techniques for creating ''Real Urbanism'' -- designing places with personality that reflect what is distinctive and original in a neighborhood, district, city, or region.

Getting the Growth You Want: A Citizens Guide to Subdivisions and Smart Growth is the first of a two-part series from the Montana Smart Growth Coalition and the Great Yellowstone Coalition designed to help communities approve good subdivisions and deny bad ones.

This popular, 100-page primer from the ongoing series by ICMA and the Smart Growth Network describes concrete techniques of putting the ten smart growth principles into practice. The policies and guidelines presented in this primer have proven successful in communities across the United States, and range from formal legislative or regulatory efforts to informal approaches, plans, and programs.

Getting to Smart Growth II: 100 More Policies for Implementation is the newest primer in the ongoing series from the Smart Growth Network and ICMA, and follows on the heels of the extremely popular first volume of Getting to Smart Growth. The publication serves as a road map for states and communities that have recognized the need for smart growth but are unclear on how to achieve it. Spanish language version now available!

Getting to Smart Growth: 100 Polices for Implementation has been made accessible for Spanish readers and speakers. The document has been translated in its entirety, complete with all policies and practice tips.

Getting to Smart Growth has been adapted for Puerto Rico. Hacia el desarrollo inteligente: 10 principios y 100 estrategias para Puerto Rico is an adaptation of the popular, 100-page primer from the ongoing series by ICMA and the Smart Growth Network.

Recognizing that planners and their organizations throughout the world provide leadership in addressing many societal issues, the Global Planners Network was initiated to further the goal of globally connecting planning groups to assist each other and share best practices.

Ethisphere magazine reports on The 20 Cities of 2020 as centers for global sustainability, with an emphasis on how density and mixed-use development provide more advantages for a vibrant, healthy community than subsurban sprawl.

The James River Green Building Council (JRGBC) is calling for submissions to its third Virginia Go Green Competition. The program was created to highlight design that supports the principles of sustainability in Central Virginia.

Celebrate with the City of Winston-Salem as they highlight the city's growing ''Green'' influence in everything from transportation to business, in a week-long celebration. A series of events is planned for September 15-19, including several elementary school presentations with the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school system, three unique forums focusing on ''Greening Your Business,'' ''Green Building and Sustainable Community,'' and ''Transportation.''

Going to Town is a special report from the Michigan Land Use Institute (MLUI) that documents newfound interest among northwest Michigan’s developers and government officials in town center developments. Rising gas prices, escalating traffic congestion, and a rapidly growing population wary of both -- and eager for a more sensible, healthier lifestyle -- are fueling that interest. Today traditional-style neighborhood or town center developments are being planned, are already rising, or are now full of satisfied residents not only in larger towns such as Traverse City, Manistee, and Petoskey, but also in villages like Empire and Harbor Springs, and even rural townships like Acme.

Going to Town: New Urbanism Arrives in Northwest Michigan, a new report from the Michigan Land Use Institute (MLUI), discusses a new approach to residential and commercial development that is saving tax dollars, protecting the environment, and increasing prosperity and quality of life in northern Lower Michigan.

The 1000 Friends Great Neighborhoods Project is intended to help teach the residents and developers in Wisconsin about the social, environmental and economic benefits of building compact, mixed-use, aesthetically appealing neighborhoods; and to offer professional and layperson guidance for how to advocate for and create these neighborhoods.

Places: Forum of Design for the Public Realm and EDRA, the Environmental Design Research Association, in cooperation with Metropolis Magazine, announce the twelfth annual Great Places Awards (formerly EDRA/Places Awards) for Place Design, Planning and Research.

Looking to illustrate the connection between planning and great places? APA's Community-Wide Audio/Web Conference Great Plans, Great Communities provides a striking introduction to planning and makes the case for the importance and wide-ranging benefits of planning.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requests proposals for the Green and Healthy Homes and Technical Studies Program. Through this RFP, HUD seeks to improve knowledge of the effects residential green construction has on both indoor environmental quality and occupant health, with a particular focus on children and other sensitive populations. It is expected that benefits would be most likely observed for respiratory health outcomes and reductions in irritation-related symptoms.

Some $2.4 million expected to be available, up to 7 awards anticipated.

Responses are due November 17, 2009.

Green And Sustainable Homes is website providing information on how to remodel an existing home, build a green addition, or build a new green home.

In the last few years, there has been a greater recognition within the green building field that sustainability is not just about buildings, but includes a focus on where and how we site our buildings, how the buildings are served by transportation, and the overall health of the communities that these buildings shape.

Green Building by the Numbers from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) is a three-page report with statistics on the state of green buildings in America.

The New York City Mayor's Office of Long-Term Planning & Sustainability, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, and the United States Environmental Protection Agency Region 2 are co-sponsors of the New York City Green Building Competition. Previously co-sponsored by the Office of Environmental Coordination in 2004 and 2006, this competition has attracted professionals and students from across the nation to present their innovative green building design projects and ideas for New York City.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) maintains this web page on green building funding opportunities.

Numerous sources of funding for green building are available at the national, state and local levels for homeowners, industry, government organizations and nonprofits. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provides this webpage with links to help you find a variety of funding sources including grants, tax-credits, loans, or others.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) maintains a webpage that lists funding resources for green building initiatives. EPA provides the links on this page to help users find a variety of funding sources including grants, tax-credits, loans, or others.

The National Association of Realtors' (NAR's) Green REsource Council website offers a Green Building Glossary of terms specific to environmentally sustainable buildings, construction, and development.

The Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation invests in clean energy development and land preservation efforts, working with communities and citizens to improve environmental quality in Illinois.

The Green Building Guidelines is an easy-to read, builder-friendly primer for homebuilders across the nation. The Guidelines book was originally developed by a committee of builders, architects, building scientists, product manufacturers. This publication from Sustainable Buildings Industry Council (SBIC) was the first national green home building resource. Their work was supported by the Department of Energy's Building America Program through the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Consortium for Advanced Residential Buildings.

GreenBuilding.com's Green Building Impact Report 2008 is the first-ever integrated assessment of the land, water, energy, material and indoor environmental impacts of the LEED for New Construction (LEED NC), Core & Shell (LEED CS) and Existing Building Operations and Maintenance (LEED EBOM) standards.

Green Building Policy in a Changing Economic Environment is a new report that provides an inventory of policies and best practices intended to help policymakers advance a more sustainable legislative agenda for growth and development. The report also contains detailed case studies of the green building programs in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, Nashville, and Grand Rapids, Mich.

According to the report, the number of U.S. cities with green building programs has increased 50% in two years. Green buildings generally include energy-efficient designs and other sustainable features. Among AIA’s findings, 138 cities have green building programs, compared with 92 cities in 2007, and 24 of the 25 most populated metropolitan regions are built around cities with a green building policy.

The report also notes that DOE's Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant program, funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, is providing ''an unprecedented opportunity for the advancement of green building and sustainability efforts in our nation's cities.'' AIA has stated a goal of making all building designs carbon neutral by 2030.

Green Building Research Funding: An Assessment of Current Activity in the United States is a report by the 2007 U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) Ginsberg Sustainability Fellow that tracks recent federal, state and trade association contributions to green building research funding.

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has announced recipients of its 2008 Green Building Research Fund grants. The Green Building Research Fund was created to spur research that will advance sustainable building practices and encourage market transformation.

Europe has been in the forefront of green building technology, and Green Building Trends: Europe provides an comprehensive overview of these energy-efficient, environmentally aware architecture and design and their applications.

The City of Portland, Oregon's Office of Sustainability has developed this ''G/Rated'' website, a depository of green building technologies, case studies, specifications, and other technical resources.

EPA has selected eight communities for Green Buildings on Brownfields pilot projects. Through the Green Buildings on Brownfields Initiative, EPA works with communities, on a pilot basis, to incorporate environmental considerations into the planning, design and implementation of their brownfields redevelopment projects.

Nearly 20 presentations from the Minnesota Green By Design Conference are now available at the conference website. The two-day event was hosted by Minnesota Green Communities in April 2006.

Green Cities, a report from Living Cities, is one of the first assessments of exactly how 40 of the country's largest cities are trying to limit their carbon footprints and take the steps needed to raise these efforts to the next level.

Green Communities offers grants for up to $5,000 to assist housing developers with integrating green building systems in their developments and engage in a serious discussion of green design possibilities, Enterprise will award planning grants to affordable housing developers to coordinate green charrettes.

Green Communities is designed to help developers, investors, and builders make the transition to a greener future for affordable housing. Led by Enterprise, The Enterprise Social Investment Corporation and the Natural Resources Defense Council, Green Communities provides a package of financial incentives and other resources to affordable housing developers across the country.

Green Communities is a five-year, $555 million initiative to build more than 8,500 environmentally healthy homes for low-income families.

Enterprise and Green Communities are accepting planning and construction grants in the Green Communities Grants program. Up to $50,000 per project is now available.

Take a Green Community Tour with Enterprise's Green Communities. Trolley Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a 40-unit building that incorporates both retail and residential space. The location and neighborhood were chosen to minimize the building's environmental impact as well as to make the best use of available natural light and passive heating and cooling opportunities. The City of Cambridge identified Trolley Square, located on the site of a former trolley storage facility, as a critical location in the revitalization of the neighborhood.

As part of The Green Communities Initiative, the Enterprise Community Loan Fund offers several lending products to support the development of affordable rental and homeownership housing that adheres to Green Communities Criteria.

The February 2008 Green Communities News reports on ''Landmark Green Affordable Policy Advances in Congress,'' ''Denver Adopts Green Communities for Affordable Housing,'' and ''Enterprise Launches Fund for Green Affordable Development in Atlanta.''

New opportunities in green affordable housing, sustainable Green Communities projects, and how HUD is promoting energy efficiency are all topics of discussion in the October 2008 Green Communities newsletter from Enterprise.

News about winners in the first annual Sustainable Cities Awards program, a call for Congress to pass the Green Resources for Energy Efficient Neighborhoods Act of 2008, and Rebuilding a Greener New Orleans are all topics of discussion in the July 2008 Green Communities newsletter from Enterprise.

Green Affordable Housing, the Green Communities Developers Summit, and information on Federal Grant Funds for Green Affordable Developments are all topics of discussion in the May 2008 Green Communities newsletter from Enterprise.

Based on the National Building Museum's exhibit, Green Community is a collection of thought-provoking essays that illuminate the connections among personal health, community health, and our planet's health.

The Greater Minnesota Housing Fund (GMHF) offers free, on its website, a series of architectural plans for green homes.

Launched in 2007, the NACo Green Government Initiative provides comprehensive resources for local governments on all things green, including energy, air quality, transportation, water quality, land use, purchasing and recycling.

NACo's Green Government Initiative Publications are free resources for local governments on all things green, including energy, air quality, transportation, water quality, land use, purchasing and recycling. Includes fact sheets, guidebooks, and case studies of Green Initiatives from throughout the country.

Is your institution a leader in sustainability? Are you making positive changes through exciting initiatives? Then get yourself recognized in the leading Sustainability Awards Scheme for universities and colleges across the U.K. Applications for the 2009 Green Gown Awards are now open, and the deadline to have your stage one application received by the Green Gown Awards team is February 27, 2009.

The WTC site in New York City is focus of the Green Ground Zero International Sustainable Design Competition. Entries should focus on ways to ''green'' the buildings that will surround the memorial on the World Trade Center grounds.

The Green Guide for Health Care™ is the health care sector’s first quantifiable sustainable design toolkit integrating enhanced environmental and health principles and practices into the planning, design, construction, operations and maintenance of their facilities.

Learn about some very important planning, design and energy considerations when building green housing, from the Massachusetts Smart Growth/Smart Energy presentation Green Housing: Good for You, Good for the Environment.

The ''Green Leases Toolkit'' from the California Sustainability Alliance (CSA) is an online toolkit designed to help integrate sustainability practices into the state's commercial leasing process.

Just about everything you think you know about the environment is wrong. Solar panels, electric cars, ethanol, big urban parks, and locavorism aren’t green; traffic jams, congestion, office towers, and crowded cities are. Green is not the country home in Vermont with the compost heap and the photovoltaic panels; it’s the concrete high-rise in New York City.

In a persuasive and provocative challenge to established environmental thinking, David Owen’s Green Metropolis: What the City Can Teach the Country About True Sustainability challenges much of the conventional wisdom about being green and shows how the greenest place in the United States isn’t Portland, Oregon, or Snowmass, Colorado, but New York, New York.

Owen—a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1991—states that while most Americans view congested cities as environmental calamities, with their pollution, garbage, and gridlock, residents of dense urban environments individually drive, pollute, consume, and throw away less than other Americans. Residents of New York City—the most densely populated community in the U.S.—consume less electricity than the average inhabitants of any other part of the country, generate greenhouse gases at a level far below the national average, and rank last in gasoline consumption and first in use of public transportation.

New York City’s environmental efficiencies are the result of its extreme compactness: being forced to live in small spaces sharply reduces opportunities to be wasteful; gridlock and a scarcity of parking spaces makes driving prohibitive while proximity simultaneously renders walking, bicycling, and public transportation viable means of getting around. Put simply, it’s easier to be green in a crowded city. The ecological innocuousness of leafy exurban areas long favored by environmentalists is an illusion—spreading people thinly across the countryside may make them feel greener, but in fact it increases their damage to the environment. In the face of rapidly dwindling nonrenewable resources, we should not look to the country, but to the dense metropolis as a model of true environmentalism.

In a radical departure from environmentalist dogma, David Owen’s Green Metropolis redefines what it means to be green, and offers vital insights into how to make our way to a more sustainable future. In this eye-opening and meticulously researched polemic, Owen argues that sustainability doesn’t depend on the acquisition of fancy new “green” gadgetry or the advent of new energy-related technologies, but on lo-fi solutions already at work in dense cities around the globe. We already have a good idea of what we need to do, or at least how to get started.

Publisher: Riverhead Books. ISBN: 978-1-59448-882-5

Green Mortgages is a feature topic in the Winter 2004 edition of On Common Ground, a magazine published twice each year by the Government Affairs office of the National Association of Realtors®.

Green Office Buildings: A Practical Guide to Development, from the Urban Land Institute, is a how-to book that gives you information on how to cost-effectively develop an environmentally sustainable office building.

The Playbook, a web-based resource, provides strategies, tips, and tools that cities and counties can use to take immediate action on climate change through: Green building, green neighborhoods, and sustainable infrastructure. The Playbook is designed both for communities that are considering making the first steps toward these, as well as for those who want to take existing efforts to a new level.

Greenbelt Alliance received the 2007 Education Project Award for its Bay Area Smart Growth Scorecard from the California chapter of the American Planning Association (APA).

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) offers the Greenbuild 2005 Proceedings CD-ROM, a compilation of events and resources from the 2005 conference.

The Natural Resources Defense Council offers an interactive web resource on how to incorporate green design in buildings -- specifically, the work completed on its new office in Santa Monica, California.

PlaNYC sets a goal of achieving a 30 percent reduction in New York City’s annual greenhouse gas emissions below 2005 levels by 2030. Acknowledging that nearly 80 percent of our citywide emissions result from the energy that we use in buildings, PlaNYC has set out to improve the energy efficiency of New York City’s buildings.

Greening America's Capitals is a project of the Partnership for Sustainable Communities between EPA, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to help state capitals develop an implementable vision of distinctive, environmentally friendly neighborhoods that incorporate innovative green building and green infrastructure strategies. This program will assist three to four communities per year, with the first projects beginning in the fall of 2010.

EPA will offer technical assistance by funding a team of designers to visit each city to produce schematic designs and exciting illustrations intended to catalyze or complement a larger planning process for the pilot neighborhood. Additionally, these pilots could be the testing ground for citywide actions, such as changes to local codes and ordinances to better support sustainable growth and green building. The design team and EPA, HUD, and DOT staff will also assist the city staff in developing specific implementation strategies.

The assistance may include, but is not limited to, the following issues:

EPA is providing this design assistance to help support sustainable communities that protect the environment, economy, and public health and to inspire state leaders to expand this work elsewhere. Greening America's Capitals will help communities consider ways to incorporate smart growth strategies into their planning and development to create and enhance interesting, distinctive neighborhoods that have multiple social, economic, and environmental benefits.

This design assistance is being made available to all 50 state capital cities, plus the District of Columbia. EPA is soliciting letters of interest from mayors of state capitals. Any city department, office, or agency may submit the letter of interest, but only one proposal should be submitted on a city's behalf.

This report by the Intergovernmental Green Building Group (IGBG) of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) explores issues related to building practices and the region's environment, reviews best practices and green building standards, and offers recommendations that local governments and COG can implement to improve the performance of buildings region wide.

How do some of the world's best-known national capitals contribute to creating an environmentally and socially sustainable world? And how do they build successful support for sustainable development? Learn what capital cities are doing to lead the way to a greener planet in this report from the Capitals Alliance.

The U.S. EPA offers archives of its Earth Day 2008 podcasts (MP3 sound files) on its Earth Day website.

Why is green infrastructure important, and how can it be incorporated as business districts grow and schools are renovated, for example? To answer these questions Casey Trees has developed a series of issue briefs, Growing a Healthier DC, that are available for free download on their website.

Growing by Choice or Chance details how South Carolina communities have an opportunity to direct their growth through more efficient land use that decreases the amount of land developed to accommodate population growth, and offers more variety in how people live, work and shop.

In Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change, a 2007 book published by the Urban Land Institute, a team of leading urban planning researchers report that the key to mitigating climate change is less auto-dependent development, and that key changes in land development patterns could help reduce vehicle greenhouse gas emissions.

Growing Smarter at the Edge, a new publication from the Sonoran Institute, reviews and evaluates urban edge development associated with large-scale planned communities, or master-planned communities.

This publication focuses on the relationship between development patterns, water use, and the cost of water delivery. It reviews literature that shows how large-lot, dispersed development patterns cost more to serve because of the length of pipe required, pumping costs, and other factors. The literature also shows that large-lot, dispersed development uses more water.

This discussion examines why an emphasis on affordable housing is critical to the success of growth management and smart growth.

This web resource includes tips on how to save energy at home, work, and on the road.

Guide to Placemaking in Chicago provides basic instruction on Placemaking at the local level and highlights specific examples of citizen-led Placemaking that has already led to sweeping improvements in Chicago neighborhoods. The book encourages citizen action and provides a framework to engage local businesses and government in helping create positive change.

The Minnesota Metropolitan Council's Guide for Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) highlights key ideas about TOD and shows how these ideas have been put to work within the Twin Cities metropolitan area.

This three-part essay discusses the general national planning situation in Britain, specifically dealing with that in force in England. Urban Design Issues, Planning Tools, and Planning Guidelines are discussed in the context of recent British development trends.

Georgia's land use laws, together with innovative planning and fresh approaches to community engagement, provide the tools needed to build strong communities that are sustainable both economically and environmentally. Guiding Growth and Development in Georgia: A Handbook on Planning and Land Use Law and Practices was created by the Livable Communities Coalition for elected officials and interested citizens. This guide is intended to provide an overview of those planning tools and the laws, terms, and concepts essential for using them wisely.

The Michigan Land Use Institute (MLUI) presents this report on new school contruction in Michigan. Hard Lessons asks whether building bigger, newer schools is always best for students and communities. The report concludes that new school construction is raising tax, economic, and community stability issues with long-term consequences.

The ''Harvard Vision 2020: A Bridge to Campus Sustainability'' Conference featured three days of discovery and discussion involving prominent keynote addresses, interdisciplinary panels of faculty, staff, students and alumni, corporate and government leaders, workshops, special events and networking opportunities. Resources from this event are now available online.

The Regional Plan Association Healthy Communities Initiative, supported by the Centers for Disease Control, the Milbank Memorial Fund, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, restores the historic relationship between the disciplines of town planning and health science.

Healthy Community Design: Success Stories from State and Local Leaders profiles the notable efforts of elected and appointed government leaders who are supporting healthy community design across the nation. Some of these efforts stem from a desire to support economic development, others to decrease environmental degradation or improve residents’ quality of life. But all of the policy changes and programming efforts have a positive effect on health because they support community design that provides more opportunities for people to engage in routine physical activity.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have posted a streaming video, Healthy Community Design, that discusses the benefits of walkable communities as they relate to health, the environment, and social interaction. Dr. Howard Frumkin, Director of the National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (NCEH/ATSDR), hosts the video.

The U.S. EPA's Healthy School Environment Resources website offers information and links to school environmental health issues.

Healthy Urban Design: Maryland’s Smart Codes and the Pedestrian Environment examines Maryland’s Smart Codes, a state initiative that encourages local communities to adopt principles of Smart Growth. The paper examines the efforts of three communities that participated in the Smart Codes initiative and the potential for these codes to transform the walkability of neighborhoods and town centers.

English Heritage (with EEDA & the HLF) has recently launched the results of research into the regeneration impact of heritage investment in the East of England. Included in the report are 11 case studies showing local success stories.

Hidden in Plain Sight: Capturing the Demand for Housing Near Transit, a new study by Reconnecting America’s Center for Transit Oriented Development, shows that demand for compact housing near transit is likely to more than double by 2025.

The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MTC) offers Green Building Case Studies that provide detailed process and performance data on selected Massachusetts green buildings and schools funded by the Renewable Energy Trust.

Presentations from ''High Performance Schools: A Regional and International Perspective,'' a one-day symposium co-sponsored by the Virginia Sustainable Building Network (VSBN), are now available online at the VSBN web site. The event was held in Washington, DC on April 24, 2006, and featured Regional Best Practices, winners of the Montgomery County, Maryland and USGBC-NCR Emerging Green Builders Portable Classroom Design Challenge, and a special evening speaker, Stefan Behnisch.

Higher Density Development: Myth or Fact is the sixth in a series of publications from the Urban Land Institute designed to dispel myths and offer good examples on issues related to growth and land use. It addresses common myths surrounding density.

Higher-Density Development -- Myth and Fact from the Urban Land Institute examines eight widespread misconceptions about higher-density development and dispels them with well-researched facts and examples of quality, compact developments.

Following five regional competitions, 15 Award-winning projects will now compete in the first global Holcim Awards competition for sustainable construction projects. The global phase of the competition showcases the best entries from more than 1500 submissions from 118 countries, and encourages innovative, future-oriented and tangible approaches within the building and construction industry.

Policies designed to deliberately control the spread of urban areas are increasing in popularity throughout the United States. Several states, and many local governments in the west, are adopting urban growth boundaries and other containment measures in their land-use planning laws and legislation. Whatever the primary purpose, it is clear that the precise impacts of containment policies are not well understood. This paper reviews the research on urban containment generally, and also examines the experience of such policies in particular metropolitan areas. It discusses some lessons learned and raises relevant research questions for practitioners as well as policymakers at the state and local level.

Homes for a Changing Region -- Phase 2: Implementing Balanced Housing Plans at the Local Level is the latest in a series of reports from Chicago Metropolis 2020 and the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus examining housing supply and demand in the six-county Chicago metropolitan region through the year 2030 and identifing imbalances that would likely impact the regional housing market.

The Housing and Transportation Affordability Index, a pilot pilot project led jointly by Reconnecting America's Center for Transit-Oriented Development and the Center for Neighborhood Technology, integrates housing and transportation costs into a single measure, correcting a pervasive information gap. The index will help local and regional planners understand the housing costs and ''location costs'' of building housing and transportation. Potential home buyers and renters, finance agencies, public and private-sector real estate developers, housing lenders, and secondary market actors can use the index to better understand the full cost of the homes they purchase.

Houston, one of America’s largest and fastest growing cities, faces a daunting challenge: by 2025, the city’s population is expected to double with an additional two million citizens. Housing Strategies for Houston: Expanding Opportunities outlines recommendations of a team of national experts for realizing a new vision.

Shaping Our Future Growth, a local, town-hall-meeting-style discussion on improving quality of life in Houston, Texas, is available for video streaming online. This three-part series was aired by Houston 8 PBS television on their ongoing local issues show, ''Houston Have Your Say.''

This PowerPoint presentation from the National Association of Counties (NACo) provides an overview of NACo's Green Government Initiative, outling the economic, environmental, and social benefits of building with green principles.

The Atlantic Monthly, November 1992. A city that protects its thriving, civil core.

As Central Florida faces the opportunities and challenges associated with the projected doubling of our population from 3.5 million citizens in 2006 to 7.2 million in 2050, the region has been given the opportunity to be the first in Florida to create a shared vision to answer the question, ''How Shall We Grow?''

This resource from the Project for Public Spaces (PPS) offers 19 tips on how to create a vibrant waterfront, drawing on success stories from around the world.

ICMA TV is a web television channel dedicated to covering the events and issues of importance to International City/County Management Association (ICMA) members. The channel is regularly updated with new films, features and coverage on topics which emerge at home and overseas.

Idaho Smart Growth created the Grow Smart Awards program in 2005 to recognize exemplary efforts in planning and development that keep our communities vibrant and our lands healthy.

Idaho Smart Growth announced winners of its 2007 Grow Smart Awards at a ceremony held Novermber 15, 2007.

Now in its fourth year, Idaho Smart Growth's statewide ''Grow Smart'' awards program recognizes the successful use of smart growth principles to encourage vibrant communities and healthy lands through sensible growth. Winners of the 2008 competition are featured on this website.

What are your hopes and dreams for Calgary's future? By answering these four simple questions, Calgarians began the process of shaping their city's future. Launched in January 2005 with the goal of producing a 100-year vision for Calgary based on what today's Calgarians want their city to look like, more than 18,000 Calgarians have added their voices to imagineCALGARY, making this the largest community visioning process of its kind anywhere in the world.

The U.S. EPA Office of Development, Community and Environment (widely known as the ''Smart Growth'' office) is sponsoring a study on ''Implementing Smart Growth Streets'' that is being conducted by ICF International and Ellen Greenberg. Readers of Smart Growth Online are invited to participate in this work by bringing candidate case studies to the attention of the project team.

Incentive Zoning from APA's Planning Advisory Service is a book that oulines how local governments can consider and draft guidelines that allow developers to build larger, higher-density projects in exchange for creating amenities to benefit the community at large.

The Growth Management Leadership Alliance has prepared a resource listing numerous scorecards development by states and cities throughout the U.S. to help determine if a project meets principles of smart growth.

The Sustainability Podcast Series features sustainability initiatives at Indiana University. These online audio resources covering a variety of topics are available for free.

HUD Secretary Mel Martinez announced the establishment of the Regulatory Barriers Clearinghouse (www.regbarriers.org), a new website dedicated to increasing affordable housing opportunities. This groundbreaking project is an exciting opportunity to assist builders and developers in overcoming state and local regulatory barriers to providing more affordable housing.

The Institute for Comprehensive Community Development was established to advance the field of comprehensive community development and the positive impact it has in urban and rural communities across the country. This is done by:

The Institute is a place where the community development field can take what it learns from practice and use it as a base from which to provide training, to promote research in comprehensive community development, and to investigate the public policies that would best advance this work locally and nationally. The Institute is the locus where practice and theory meet, and where experimentation and innovation – grounded in real-world experience – flourish.

The Institute for Comprehensive Community Development is a venture of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC).

The American Planning Association (APA) has released preliminary findings of a nationwide survey to measure how communities can create opportunities for citizens to be more physically active.

Founded in 1914, ICMA is the professional and educational association for more than 8,000 appointed administrators and assistant administrators serving cities, counties, other local governments, and regional entities around the world. ICMA is also the organizational ''home'' for the Smart Growth Network, an independent membership organization that assists its members in identifying strategies and tools to protect the health and welfare of their communities through the integration of environmentally sound decision making and economic growth. ICMA also produces the SGN bimonthly newsletter, Getting Smart!

The 2007 International Making Cities Livable Mixed-Use Design Award was presented to Anderson Pacific LLC, in recognition of their significant contribution to reviving the principles of true urbanism in their development of Livermore Village, California.

The American dream of a single family home on its own lot is still strong, but a different dream of living and prospering in a major city is beginning to take hold. After decades of abandonment by the middle class, a detectable number of people are moving into urban downtown areas.

Introduction to New Urbanism is a PowerPoint presentation from CNU that introduces the key principles of New Urbanism, describes the growth and development challenges around which the movement has rallied, and provides examples of New Urbanism playing a strong role in improving communities.

This presentation has been developed through a collaborative project involving individuals and organizations operating under the guidance of Smart Growth America. Research assistance was provided by the U.S. EPA. The presentation is intended to be used by individuals and organizations committed to helping communities achieve the objectives of Smart Growth. If you have any questions about the use of this presentation, please contact John Bailey (jbailey@transact.org) at Smart Growth America.

This discussion paper prepared by The Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy makes the case that more compact development patterns and investing in projects to improve urban cores could save taxpayers money and improve overall regional economic performance.

Author John I. Gilderbloom draws on case studies in Houston, Louisville, and New Orleans and analyzes census information as well as policy reports in Invisible City, a book that outlines how housing can be remade with a progressive vision.

Substandard and unaffordable housing supply is a national problem needing long-term solutions. Through the HOME and CDBG programs, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) provides financial assistance to state and local governments to implement housing strategies. The State of Iowa has elected to combine a portion of its CDBG funds with its HOME funds in a unique approach to funding housing activities.

The Iowa Green Streets Criteria, published by Iowa Department of Economic Development (IDED), promote public health, energy efficiency, water conservation, smart locations, operational savings and sustainable building practices.

This article by Yan Song and Gerrit-Jan Knapp and published in the Spring 2004 Journal of the American Planning Association examines different methods used to measure sprawl, and uses those methods to analyze development patterns in the Portland, Oregon metro area.

The Project for Public Spaces (PPS) offers a checklist on its website that provides benchmarks of a Great City.

Nominations are now open for the 2009 James Irvine Foundation Leadership Awards. This annual competition recognizes individual leaders who are advancing innovative and effective solutions to significant issues in California.

The Joint Center for Sustainable Communities is a collaboration between the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) and the National Association of Counties (NACo). Its primary mission is to provide a forum for cities and counties to work together to develop long-term policies and programs that will lead to job growth, environmental stewardship, and social equity the three pillars of sustainable communities. The Joint Center helps local elected officials build sustainable communities by promoting community leadership initiatives, providing technical assistance and training, and conducting community policy and educational forums. It works with the SGN to create programs and resources targeted at local elected and environmental officials to encourage, facilitate, and promote their sustainable communities projects

The June 2008 edition of Getting Smart! is now available for all Smart Growth Network members in the Members Section. This issue takes a look at the critical role citizens play in advocating for smart growth, and attempt to answer the question, ''What can I do?''

The Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program offers the Katrina Index: Tracking Variables of Post-Katrina Reconstruction. This publication provides a benchmark for reconstruction progress, indexing nearly 50 economic and social indicators that measure the impact of rebuilding efforts in Orleans Parish, the New Orleans metropolitan area, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

Based on interviews with more than 150 individuals who constitute a ''Who's Who'' of the world's leading real estate executives, this hardcover book examines the transformation of America's largest industry--real estate--and identifies the attributes needed by chief executives and other leaders who are guiding their businesses through profound change. This book identifies the leadership strategies of and lessons learned by leading executives who have survived the downs of multifaceted business cycles and profitably taken advantage of ensuing opportunities in recovery.

Published 2009. ISBN: 978-0-87420-101-7. ULI Order Number: K05.

KnowledgePlex is a comprehensive interactive resource for the affordable housing and community development field. Designed for practitioners, scholars, and policy makers, the website offers practical solutions and innovative ideas, timely news and authoritative information, and collaboration with other housing leaders.

Land Bank Authorities: A Guide for the Creation and Operation of Local Land Banks from Local Initiative Support Corporation (LISC) explores the development of land banks in St. Louis, Cleveland, Louisville, Atlanta, and Genesee County, Mich., addressing the conditions, history, and legal structures of each.

Ask the Expert forums at Michigan State University's Land Policy Institute include nine online discussion forums for public dialogue with academic and other experts related to land use, economic development, and sustainability.

This report, commissioned by ''Californians and the Land,'' a group of leaders from California's business, government, and environmental sectors, addresses three major issues: How much growth should California expect and why?; How are land use and quality of life issues related to the California economy?; and, What are the principles that must be addressed if Californians are to combine economic growth and a high quality of life now and for future generations?

MPOs in the Atlanta and San Francisco regions used DOT funds to promote smart growth through planning studies and transportation improvement projects. Learn how they are implementing a regional approach to linking transportation and land use planning through nonprofit and public sector agency efforts.

From Traditional to Reformed: A Review of the Land Use Regulations in the Nation's 50 largest Metropolitan Areas is a comprehensive survey of local land use regulations from The Brookings Institution that finds a wide variety of regulatory regimes in the nation's 50 largest metropolitan areas. They range from exclusionary and restrictive to innovative and accommodating. These produce a variety of effects on metropolitan growth and density, and on the opportunities afforded to the residents that live there.

One of the most important issues our communities face today is a staggering increase in the rates of obesity and chronic disease. Active living offers an opportunity for leaders to address this issue and to help improve the health and vitality of our communities. The 22-page Action Strategies Booklet lists more than 25 strategies and tactics local and state governments can use to support active living.

Learning for Sustainability is the first New South Wales three-year environmental education plan. It aims to build the capacity of the whole community to be engaged in making environmental improvements and living sustainably.

This paper is designed to help further the understanding of and contribute to learning from international approaches to smarter growth policies and sustainable development.

The U.S. Green Building Council, the Congress for the New Urbanism, and the Natural Resources Defense Council -- three organizations that represent that nation's leaders among progressive design professionals, builders, planners, developers, and the environmental community -- have come together to develop LEED for Neighborhood Development, a rating system that will integrate the principles of smart growth, urbanism, and green building into the first national standard for neighborhood design.

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has prepared this Frequently Asked Questions sheet for their LEED for Neighborhood Development program.

The LEED for Neighborhood Development Rating System integrates the principles of smart growth, urbanism and green building into the first national system for neighborhood design. LEED certification provides independent, third-party verification that a development's location and design meet accepted high levels of environmentally responsible, sustainable development. LEED for Neighborhood Development is a collaboration among U.S. Green Building Council, the Congress for the New Urbanism and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) invites the public to participate in the first public comment period for the proposed draft of the LEED for Neighborhood Development 2009 Rating System.

LEED for Neighborhood Development -- the pilot rating system launched jointly by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) is off to a promising start. A total of 238 developments have signed up to participate in the pilot program, which will be the first national certification system for sustainable neighborhood design and development.

A preliminary pilot draft of the LEED-ND Rating System under development by the LEED for Neighborhood Developments Core Committee is being made available for comments. The comments made during this period will aid the LEED-ND Core Committee in revising the preliminary pilot draft and producing a draft which will be the LEED-ND Pilot Rating System.

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) is now soliciting comments on the first draft of LEED for Schools. The first public comment period will be open for 31 days, starting Thursday, August 10, 2006 and continuing through Sunday, September 10, 2006 at midnight Pacific Standard Time.

Palo Alto: Collaborative Economics, April 1998. This paper was written in response to the absence of economy in the discussions about new Urbanism and Livable Communities. Thus this paper aims to interject this concern into the debate, highlighting the economic benefits of livability and smart growth, and defining the place of new urbanism in the new economy.

Local Initiatives Support Corporation's Green Development Center supports green design, construction, and management principles in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. The Center is the latest LISC program to support comprehensive community revitalization.

Livability 101: What Makes a Community Livable? is designed by the American Institute of Architects’ Center for Communities by Design to help public officials, and all others actively engaged in this civic dialogue, understand the basic elements of community design and take advantage of existing tools, strategies, and synergies at the policy, planning, and design levels so that their communities can reach their full potential.

The Local Government Division (LGD) of the New Mexico Department of Finance and Administration (DFA) is the sponsor of this Livability Innovation Fund grant program for enhancing -- through planning and design -- the livability of New Mexico communities.

From the website: The International Making Cities Livable Council (IMCL) is an interdisciplinary, international network of individuals and cities dedicated to making our cities and communities more livable.

Livable Communities and Water, a fact sheet from Local Government Commission (LGC), explains for elected officials the surprising links between livable communities and water -- and the many benefits of acting on them.

The AARP and the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) will present the groups' co-sponsored 2007 Livable Communities Award to two builders, two developers and one remodeler for forward thinking in the field of home and community design. The Livable Communities Award honors builders, developers and remodelers that create attractive, well-designed homes and communities, which are safe, comfortable and accessible for people of all ages and abilities.

The Houston-Galveston Area Council includes on its website a section featuring Livable Communities publications and presentations. These documents, generally available online for free as PDFs and Powerpoints, cover several topic areas and include resources from several local events.

This new publication series being from the Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities focuses on the practical aspects of how we create smarter, more livable communities for all. Each and will highlight successful strategies, explore tensions created by competing issues, and generally help spur informed debate on critical topics.

Livable Landscapes: By Chance Or By Choice? explores the changing relationship between people and the land in northern New England. This documentary features stories of average citizens taking a stand against sprawl and making postive choices about their communities' growth and change.

The Livable Communities Awards (LivCom) is the world’s only Awards Competition focussing on Best Practice regarding the management of the local environment. The objective of LivCom is to improve the quality of life of individual citizens through the creation of ‘liveable communities’. Registration deadline for the 2006 LivCom Livable Community Awards Awards is May 31, 2006.

DeKalb, IL: Center for Agriculture in the Environment: 1999. Researchers identified three patterns of scatter development common to the Chicago region and found that scatter development in the Chicago suburbs is often subsidized by those living in adjoining municipalities. Furthermore, for many living in these far flung houses and subdivisions, the emergency response times for police, ambulance and fire fighters may exceed national standards

The LGC is a twenty-year-old nonprofit membership organization that offers education, training, and technical assistance to local areas seeking to implement innovative long-term solutions that further economically and environmentally sustainable land use patterns. The LGC began working on land use and community livability issues in 1991 with the drafting of the Ahwahnee Principles for Resource-Efficient Communities. Through its national initiative, the Center for Livable Communities, the LGC offers assistance on key issues, including compact development, infill development, transit-oriented and mixed-use development, and public participation tools. New in 1999 are guidebooks on residential street design and smart economic development. The LGC also produces slide presentations, workshops, and conferences, and through the Center's hotline (800/290-8202), it offers resources, networking, and referrals

The Local Leaders Report: A Study of Green Building Programs in Our Nation's Communities from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) examines the current state of green building laws in American cities as of 2007.

Local Planning: Contemporary Principles and Practice is the all-new edition of the popular book, The Practice of Local Government Planning, which has been the valued resource for preparing for the AICP exam. This new edition helps the reader understand the complexities of planning at the local level, and prepare to make decisions in a challenging environment.

The book:

Local Planning: Contemporary Principles and Practice focuses on emerging issues and future challenges, offering useful, current examples of leading planning practices. The organization and content of the book will help planners and nonplanners who manage the work of planners apply well-reasoned strategic thinking to their planning challenges, and will help students of the profession bridge theory and practice.

Stories, tools and lessons learned from communities thoughout the nation on how to employ planning and development policy to improve quality of life and achieve smart growth goals.

This brochure provides an overview of Location Efficient Mortgages® (LEM), a program that increases the amount of money homebuyers in urban areas are able to borrow by taking into account the money they save by living in neighborhoods where they can shop at nearby stores and use public transit, rather than driving to work and to the mall.

Louisiana Speaks is the long-term community planning initiative of the Louisiana Recovery Authority. The Louisiana Speaks Regional Plan document lays out a clear plan based on Louisianians' aspirations for the future, and it provides specific actions to get there.

Low Carbon Neighborhoods, High-Quality Living is an initiative from the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) that emphasizes how neighborhoods are one of the best remedies for combating climate change.

Lesley University's M.A. in Urban Environmental Leadership gives students an opportunity to study the complete picture of the urban environment and gain a understanding of the human forces that shape it.

The Massachusetts State Sustainability Planning and Implementation Guide, written by the State Sustainability Council in collaboration with Program staff, is a guidebook providing agencies with goals and actions that can be taken to initiate and advance sustainability efforts.

August 1, 2007 is the deadline for educational educational session proposals for the 2008 National Main Streets Conference. Share your experiences, raise your visibility among industry professionals and help us explore this year's conference theme, ''Enriching Main Street Through Entrepreneurship and Diversity,'' by submitting your proposal today.

The Main Street Handbook was created to assist local communities in their efforts to balance often competing interests: the desire for a vital, pedestrian-friendly downtown with the desire for efficient movement of through traffic.

This news briefing from the Congress for New Urbanism describes how a group of New Urbanists is bridging the gap between traditional New Urbanism concepts and the principles of green building. The result is an ''enhanced sustainability'' combining the benefits of urbanism and environmentalism.''

This presentation discusses the kinds of land development regulations found in many communities. It explains how outdated land development regulations may inhibit smart growth and how such regulations can be revised to promote it instead. The presentation and all images contained in it may be used for non-commercial, educational purposes. Available in PowerPoint, PDF, and HTML formats. Presented by the Smart Growth Network Partners.

Making Sense of Place -- Phoenix: The Urban Desert is a one-hour documentary film about urban growth and change in and around Phoenix, Arizona. In only half a century, Phoenix has expanded from a small desert town into the sixth-largest city in the country.

This 170-page book provides an in-depth look at the underlying principles of smart growth, explains how developers and planners have applied them, and how the public and private sectors can collaborate to make smart growth effective.

Making the Case for Mixed Income and Mixed Use Communities, from the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership, Inc. (ANDP), is the culmination of four years of study into the growing challenges to housing affordability in metro Atlanta.

The latest issue of Getting Smart! is now available for all Smart Growth Network members in the Members Section. This edition of Getting Smart! examines the unique role that local government managers play in implementing smart growth.

This series of articles from On Common Ground, The National Association of Realtors® Smart Growth Magazine, attempts to grasp this subject of supply and demand for Smart Growth.

The State of Maryland has created an online ''listening session'' where residents can provide their views and opinions on the future of growth and development in the state. The online survey takes about 15 to 20 minutes to complete.

Governor's Office of Smart Growth. This one-stop resource for individuals, communities, builders and environmentalists contains the many programs offered by Maryland State agencies in support of Smart Growth principles and the Maryland Smart Growth Program.

The Smart Growth Technical Assistance Grant Program, offered by the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EOEEA), provides grants of up to $30,000 per community to implement smart growth zoning changes and undertake other activities that will improve local and regional sustainable development practices.

''Sustainable Development Design and Green Building Links'' is a section of the Planning and Housing Development Toolkit, produced by the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD). DHCD encourages housing development that is consistent with smart growth, sustainable design and green building practices.

The Massachusetts Sustainability Program is working to educate all state agencies on the importance of taking environmentally sustainable measures into account when renovating or constructing buildings and facilities, and is working with the Division of Capital Asset Management (DCAM) to implement these design strategies in state construction projects. DCAM has been actively promoting sustainable design practices over the last few years through their Sustainable Design Program, which has developed ''Sustainable Design Guidelines'' for use on agency construction projects.

The latest issue of Getting Smart! is now available for all Smart Growth Network members in the Members Section. This edition of Getting Smart! focuses on the aging of America and related challenges and opportunities. Featured articles include ''Get Ahead of the Age Wave with Smart Growth,'' ''The Senior Transportation Challenge: Signs of Hope,'' ''Active Living for Older Adults,'' and more, including articles on age-related living in Atlanta; Scottsdale, Arizona; and Central Virginia.

The Mayors' Institute on City Design is a partnership program of the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Architectural Foundation, and the United States Conference of Mayors. This video provides an overview of the organization, illustrating the benefits of shared knowledge in tackling difficult urban design and liveability issues.

In Measuring the Air Quality and Transportation Impacts of Infill Development the U.S. EPA illustrates how regions can calculate the transportation and air quality benefits of infill, based on standard transportation forecasting models used by metropolitan planning organizations across the country.

Obesity has reached epidemic levels, and diseases associated with inactivity are also on the rise. What is creating this public health crisis? This report presents the first national study to show a clear association between the type of place people live and their activity levels, weight, and health.

On the heels of signing into law a $787 billion economic stimulus and recovery package, President Obama has delivered a 10-year budget plan that could fundamentally reshape the nation's priorities. Brookings experts suggest how the budget plan and recovery package might affect the metropolitan drivers of national prosperity, including innovation, human capital, infrastructure and sustainable places.

The Midwest Assistance Program is providing low-cost, short and intermediate term loans for community water and wastewater projects through its Community Revolving Loan Fund.

Produced by the City of Minneapolis, this publication list steps to creating a sustainable Minneapolis.

The Environmental Initiative Awards annually recognize 15 innovative projects that have achieved extraordinary environmental outcomes through collaborative partnerships. Partnerships can include joint efforts by businesses, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations. Minnesota Environmental Initiative (MEI) welcomes nominations for awards each year.

Minnesota Green Communities is an initiative designed to foster the creation of affordable, healthier, and more energy-efficient homes throughout Minnesota. Through pilot funding of Minnesota Green Communities by the Greater Minnesota Housing Fund, the Family Housing Fund, and Enterprise, four demonstration projects will be built in Minnesota (2005-2007) totaling 180 homes, including rental, homeownership and supportive affordable green housing.

The Mississippi Renewal Forum's Final Report in summary format is now available online. This report summarizes the 18 individual reports crafted to guide the rebuilding of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Final team reports have been released from The Mississippi Renewal Forum, held October 11-17, 2005. The Renewal Forum was a gathering of design specialists from across the nation to help provide rebuilding visions for communities devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

This publication from the Maryland Department of Planning addresses infill development and includes model zoning codes, examples of existing zoning codes from jurisdictions throughout the country, and a list of minimum requirements that jurisdictions must meet in order to qualify for certain state incentives.

This summary report presents an overview of the conclusions and recommendations resulting from the Montana Transportation Choices Study, an evaluation of the state's transportation program.

The Montana Smart Growth Coalition has created a quantitative checklist of criteria to determine if a development project is truly smart growth and deserves MSGC's support during permitting and marketing. A developer may use an MSGC endorsement for marketing purposes after the development is half built out.

Moving Communities Forward, a project by the American Institute of Architects and the Center for Transportation Studies, measures the benefits that well-designed transportation projects bring to communities.

Municipal Green Building Policies: Strategies for Transforming Building Practices in the Private Sector from the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) is a report that reviews more than 30 municipal policies that aim to advance green building in the private sector.

Myths and Facts about Affordable High-Density Housing is a report from the California Planning Roundtable that seeks to dispel common myths about multifamily and high-density development in high-growth California communities. Common myths, according to this report, include heavy traffic, crowded schools, buildings that clash with existing buildings, and criminal activity. The myths are often used to combat growth or to restrict affordable housing developments.

The National Association of Counties' (NACo) Center for Sustainable Communities has announced the winners of its 2005 awards program, recognizing innovative counties for creative county led partnerships to develop sustainable communities.

To increase the effectiveness of state and local REALTOR® association efforts in creating livable communities, the National Association of Realtors' (NAR's) Smart Growth Action Grant program is available to support your efforts to implement programs and activities that position REALTORS® as leaders in improving their communities by advancing smart growth.

To increase the effectiveness of state and local REALTOR® association efforts in creating livable communities, NAR’s Smart Growth Action Grant program is available to support your efforts to implement programs and activities that position REALTORS® as leaders in improving their communities by advancing smart growth.

The rational for REALTOR® involvement in local land use issues is compelling: the healthier the community, the more attractive it will be to homebuyers. However, land use issues often require long-term efforts on the behalf of advocates. NAR’s Smart Growth Action Grants are intended to help your association and members initiate and sustain an active role in bringing smart growth development principles to your community.

Education and coalition building are hallmarks of successful smart growth efforts. The grants can be used to further activities to develop a community vision through a community planning workshop or joining a coalition that is working toward a similar community vision. Additionally, grant funds may be used to support green building activities, such as working with state or local officials to develop green building/energy efficiency policies for your community.

Applications are due April 2, 2010.

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) has established a grant program to help members implement programs and activities that position realtors as leaders in improving their communities by advancing smart growth. NAR will consider applications twice in 2005, first-round applications are due to NAR on June 30th.

For more information please visit the resource link below.

NACo is a full-service organization that provides legislative, research, technical, and public affairs assistance to its members. Created in 1935 to provide a strong voice for county officials in the nation's capital, NACo continues to ensure that the nation's 3,072 counties are heard and understood in the White House and in Congress. The association acts as a liaison with other levels of government, works to improve public understanding of counties, serves as a national advocate for counties, and provides counties with resources to help them find innovative methods to meet the challenges they face. NACo is working with the SGN on developing information tailored to the needs of both rural and urban county officials to help them address growth, infrastructure needs, and environmental health.

NALGEP is a nonprofit association representing local government officials who are responsible for ensuring environmental compliance and implementing environmental programs. NALGEP's diverse membership includes environmental managers and commissioners, solid waste coordinators, and public works and planning directors. NALGEP has launched the Smart Growth Business Partnership, a project convening corporate leaders and local officials to determine how businesses can support smart growth principles and practices. The project is examining the impacts of sprawl on business and the need for businesses and localities to promote better development practices.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is now accepting applications for the sixth annual National Award for Smart Growth Achievement. This competition is open to public-sector entities that have successfully used smart growth principles to improve communities environmentally, socially, and economically. Entry deadline is April 3, 2007; winners will be recognized at a ceremony in Washington, DC, in November 2007.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is accepting applications for the seventh annual National Award for Smart Growth Achievement. This competition is open to public-sector entities that have used smart growth principles to improve communities environmentally, socially, and economically. Applications are due on April 7, 2008.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will present the 2008 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. on November 19, 2008. The Smart Growth Achievement Award recognizes public-sector entities that have used smart growth principles to improve communities environmentally, socially, and economically.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is pleased to announce that applications are now being accepted for the eighth annual National Award for Smart Growth Achievement. This competition is open to public-sector or private sector applicants that have used the principles of smart growth to create better places.

Do you know of a good candidate for a National Green Building Award? The awards honor advocates, builders, programs, and products in the advancement of the green-home building industry. Six awards in four categories recognize different facets of the residential building community.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation is proud to announce the winners of the 2005 National Main Street Awards, which include the Main Street Leadership Awards and Great American Main Street Awards, on May 9, 2005, in Baltimore, Maryland.

NNC promotes a neighborhood focus at all levels of government and throughout society by advocating for programs and policies that foster partnerships between neighborhood organizations, private sector institutions, and government agencies. As a partner in the SGN, NNC is active in research and advocacy. It also convenes member organizations to address the role of neighborhood organizations in smart growth and to relate smart growth to the needs of existing lower-income communities.

The American Planning Association (APA) will honor outstanding efforts in planning and planning leadership, including cutting-edge achievements and planning under difficult or adverse circumstances, in the 2009 National Planning Excellence, Leadership and Achievement Awards. APA invites you to participate in the celebration of the best in plans and planning by nominating projects and people you think deserving of such recognition.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is seeking proposals for organizing a national smart growth conference. This conference will be a multi-disciplinary event that focuses on diverse smart growth issues and attracts a diverse audience of practitioners, researchers and policy makers. This conference should be at least a 3 full days and should be convened in January or February 2009.

Report from the National Summit on School Design is a 70-page report intended to help communities make better decisions about the approximately $30 billion spent annually on building and renovating school facilities in the United States.

Chartered by Congress in 1949, the National Trust has more than 270,000 members and seven regional offices to help communities preserve their heritage and the livability. The trust promotes downtown revitalization as a major alternative to sprawl through its National Main Street Center as well as through public policy advocacy, conferences, and technical assistance. It has published several books describing techniques for minimizing sprawl and promoting smart growth; these include Smart States, Better Communities (a compendium of ideas for smart growth policies at the state level), Better Models for Superstores: Alternatives to Big-Box Sprawl, and How Superstore Sprawl Can Harm Communities (And What Citizens Can Do about It). SGN members can receive these publications at a discounted rate from the trust.

Vacant properties and abandoned buildings present communities with complex challenges. Crime, arson and reduced property values are just a few of the problems that vacant properties bring to neighborhoods, and solving these problems is surprisingly difficult.

NRDC is a nonprofit organization with more than 400,000 members nationwide; its mission is to preserve the environment, protect the public health, and ensure the conservation of wilderness and natural resources. NRDC pursues these goals through research, advocacy, litigation, and public education.

Sprawling urban development and auto-dominated streets make it nearly impossible for people to integrate walking or bicycling into their daily routines. As national physical activity levels decrease and obesity rates increase, local leaders are looking for ways to incorporate smart growth or livable communities principles into their general plans so people can safely and conveniently walk and ride a bicycle for transportation and exercise.

While many communities subscribe to livability principles, local governments often encounter difficulty implementing them. All too often the broad ''smart growth'' objectives that are included in a general plan lack the detail and legal framework that is necessary to effectively guide actual development. As a result, development is less compact, and less conducive to walking and bicycling than was originally envisioned. This six page fact sheet offers tips, tools, and case studies to help communities align planning with the implementation of walkable community design.

For more information please visit the resource link below.

New audio recordings are now available from seven Smart Growth Speaker Series events at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. Audio from the April through October 2008 events can be accessed through the Smart Growth Online website 24 hours a day.

National Governors Association, 2001. This report explains how states and communities can encourage New Community Design -- mixed-use, mixed-income, walkable development that is distinctly different from sprawl -- by eliminating institutional barriers in the marketplace.

The February 2003 issue of ''Getting Smart'' is available in the Members Section. Features in this issue include Managing Urban Transportation Systems: The Need for a New Operating Paradigm; Transportation Reform and Social Equity: An Agenda for Smart Growth; and a feature on Enhancing America’s Communities.

Not Yet a Member? Click Here for a list of benefits.

Land Use and the Changing Patterns of Place is a sweeping diagnosis of land use trends in the West and a prescription for better planning and policy decisions. Authored by 2005-2006 Orton Family Foundation Fellow and University of Colorado-Boulder Professor of Geography, William Travis, this is the first book in a series that explores the complex land use issues underlying many of the nation's most pressing social problems while highlighting new models and visions for vibrant and sustainable communities.

Responding to a growing number of requests from states for assistance in managing growth, three former governors with a long history of promoting smart growth -- Christie Whitman (New Jersey--also former EPA Administrator), Parris Glendening (Maryland) and Angus King (Maine) -- today joined EPA and the National Endowment for the Arts in announcing a new Governors' Institute on Community Design. The Institute is intended to support governors' leadership in good community design and sound planning.

The New Hampshire Transportation Business Plan (TBP) is a 25-year vision that will serve to advance transportation, economic development, land use and environmental goals throughout the state.

New Jersey Future’s Smart Growth Awards honor town officials, developers, contractors, architects and corporate leaders who have the courage to resist status quo growth patterns and instead adopt smart growth values and design principles.

New Jersey Future's Smart Growth Awards honor town officials, developers, contractors, architects and corporate leaders who have the courage to resist status quo growth patterns and instead adopt smart growth values and design principles.

More than 300 guests celebrated New Jersey Future's 7th Annual Smart Growth Awards on June 5, 2008, at the Newark Club in Newark.

More than 300 people attended the 2009 New Jersey Future Smart Growth Awards on June 3, 2009 at the Newark Club, where seven projects were recognized in the 2009 competition.

New Jersey Future's Smart Growth Awards honor plans and developments in all parts of the state that exemplify sound land use practice through the implementation of smart growth principles and the State Development and Redevelopment Plan.

The State of New Jersey Department of Community Affairs has produced a webpage featuring success stories from communities that employ smart growth guidelines.

The New Markets Tax Credit is a federal program that offers investors such as local banks a 39 percent tax credit over seven years for loans and equity investments in businesses that serve low- and moderate-income residents.

The New Partners for Smart Growth organizers have issued a Call for Program Ideas for their Fifth Annual Conference, to be held in Denver, Colorado, January 26-28, 2006.

The New Partners for Smart Growth organizers have issued a Call for Program Ideas for their Sixth Annual Conference, to be held in Los Angeles, California, February 8-10, 2007.

More than 220 PowerPoint presentations from the 2007 New Partners for Smart Growth Conference are now available on Smart Growth Online, courtesy of the Local Government Commission (LGC).

More than 230 PowerPoint presentations from the 2008 New Partners for Smart Growth Conference are now available on Smart Growth Online, courtesy of the Local Government Commission (LGC).

More than 230 PowerPoint presentations from the 2009 New Partners for Smart Growth Conference are now available on Smart Growth Online, courtesy of the Local Government Commission (LGC).

The 4th Annual New Partners for Smart Growth: Building Safe, Healthy and Livable Communities conference was held January 27-29, 2005 in Miami Beach, Florida. View the entire program and PowerPoint presentations from select events, or order audio files.

The 2005 publication New Plans for Barren Lands: A Brownfield Redevelopment Guide, produced by The Michigan Land Use Institute (MLUI) for Michigan’s northern coastal communities, summarizes the statewide achievements in downtown investment resulting from modernized state toxic cleanup laws, now a decade old.

Measuring Sprawl and Its Impact, based on research conducted by professors at Rutgers and Cornell universities, ranks 83 metropolitan areas on the basis of twenty-two measurable components of sprawl.

The Economic Profile System (EPS) is a tool for community stewardship. This term describes locally driven initiatives that strive to protect the ecological and cultural values of an area, while meeting a community’s economic and social needs.

Video and presentations from CNU XVI, the Congress for the New Urbanism's April 3-6 event in Austin, Texas, are now available online. Nearly 1500 attendees worked on solutions to climate change, household gasoline dependency, and troubled real estate markets.

Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) has prepared a 13-page bibliography listing of academic articles about new urbanism.

Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) has an Education Task Force that has compiled new bibliographies of journal articles and dissertations written about New Urbanism.

The Fourth edition of New Urbanism: Best Practices Guide is the most comprehensive and up-to-date sourcebook on the ideas and techniques of New Urbanism ever published. Thoroughly revised and substantially expanded by the editors of New Urban News, this brand new book explains how New Urbanism came about, what its principles are, and how it is improving communities in the United States and other countries.

New Urbanism: Comprehensive Report & Best Practices Guide by Robert Steuteville and Phillip Langdon, is the definitive reference for new urban ideas, practices, and projects. This wire-comb bound edition is available directly from the publisher, New Urban News, with a special price for students.

This definitive reference on new urban ideas, practices, and projects from New Urban Publications, Inc. includes updates and new sections as well as more than 400 illustrations and tables, projects, plans, and renderings.

Share the opportunities and challenges of designing and retrofitting communities that make it easier for people to live healthy lives at New Urbanism: Rx for Healthy Places is the theme of CNU's 18th annual Congress in Atlanta, set for May of 2010.

The Congress for New Urbanism's (CNU) K-12 Initiative has produced a bibliography of resources for primary and secondary teachers to introduce students to the concepts of New Urbanism, Smart Growth, and traditional town planning. This provides teachers with curriculum suggestions, teaching modules, videotapes, books, and games that are grade and age appropriate.

GreenHomeNYC is collecting detailed profiles of green buildings across New York City. Information about buildings is submitted by owners, developers and managers, who also write the descriptions.

The New York State Department of Transportation's (NYSDOT) Smart Planning Program has developed a number of tools to help illustrate the link between transportation and land use planning and to educate communities about Smart Growth.

The 2006 New York State Governor's Quality Communities Awards for Excellence is open for entries.

The New Zealand Urban Design Protocol provides a platform to make New Zealand towns and cities more successful through quality urban design. It is part of the Government's Sustainable Development Programme of Action and Urban Affairs portfolio.

The Niagara Community Design Awards recognize individuals, projects, and programs for the demonstrated vision, leadership, innovation, and overall contribution to building a more pedestrian-focused and economically vibrant Niagara, by design.

The New Jersey Office of Smart Growth offers a website that lists grant information for communities in the Garden State.

Notice of funding availability, open space and preservation initiatives, and award notifications are among the items listed on this online resource.

For more information please visit the resource link below.

A special issue of Local Environment, an international refereed journal, is now available online. Articles include ''Smart Growth in a Small Urban Setting the challenges of building an acceptable solution,'' by Henry J. Mayer, Christine M. Danis, and Michael R. Greenberg; ''Taking Sustainable Cities Seriously a comparative analysis of twenty-four US cities,'' by Kent E. Portney; and ''Local Government and the WSSD,'' by Mike Ashley.

NESEA announces the 2003 Northeast Green Building Awards. This design competition is sponsored by the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust and recognizes outstanding high-performance architecture in the northeastern United States.

Northeast-Midwest Institute is a nonprofit research and educational organization that works to enhance economic competitiveness and environmental quality. The institute's Urban Environment Program addresses the dual challenges of redeveloping the urban core while improving the built and natural environment in metropolitan regions. Research topics include site cleanup, transportation, air and water quality, housing, education, and land conservation. The institute is unique among Washington policy centers because of its close working relationship with the bipartisan NortheastMidwest Congressional and Senate Coalitions. Institute activities with the SGN include a workbook and conference on infill development, research on federal barriers to smart growth and urban livability, and brownfield cleanup and redevelopment policies.

The November 2007 issue of Getting Smart! focuses on how economic development can be integrated with smart growth. The economic development argument is often one of the most powerful arguments advocates can make for smart growth.

The November 2008 edition of Planning, a monthly magazine published by the American Planning Association, is now available. Planning offers news and analyses of events in planning, including suburban, rural, and small town planning; environmental planning; neighborhood revitalization; economic development; social planning; and urban design.

Building Green: From Principle to Practice is the theme of this website from the Natural Resources Defense Council. Find out how building green can boost your bottom line, get tips for streamlining design and construction, and more. Learn which strategies deliver the biggest paybacks.

Smarter Cities, a project of the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), is a multimedia web initiative that provides a forum for exploring the progress that American cities are making in environmental stewardship and sustainable growth.

The Summer 2006 edition of On Common Ground focuses on the New Urbanism, an urban design movement that aims to reform urban planning and real estate development toward building more human-scaled and walkable communities.

The UK Government and Devolved Administrations has launched their new Strategic Framework, One Future -- Different Paths. This was launched in conjunction with the UK Government's new strategy for sustainable development, Securing the Future.

The Ontario Community Sustainability Report -- 2007 was produced by The Pembina Institute to evaluate whether policies and plans that use the language of sustainability are being translated into tangible progress on the ground.

This commentary by Bruce Katz and Mark Muro of The Brookings Institution in The Detroit News contends that fostering more compact development in Michigan and elsewhere makes even more sense in hard times, since reform can save taxpayers money.

Citizens from civic, environmental, business, neighborhood and community groups have joined with the University of Washington to create a 100-year plan for Seattle's open spaces. This collaborative vision reaches from the city limits to the downtown core, creating a comprehensive network of parks, civic spaces, streets, trails, shorelines, and urban forests that will bind neighborhoods to one another, create ecological conduits from the city's ridgelines to its shorelines, and ensure a wealth of green spaces for all citizens to enjoy.

Opolis is a semi-annual, peer-reviewed publication. The journal is broad-based and multidisciplinary, inviting submissions from fields across the social and natural sciences. Likewise, the methods used in articles are equally varied and cover a mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches. Opolis also profiles applied work that address ways of improving metropolitan growth.

In recent years interest has grown in Smart Growth as a mechanism for improving environmental quality. In Our Built and Natural Environments, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) summarizes technical research on the relationship between the built and natural environments, as well as current understanding of the role of development patterns, urban design, and transportation in improving environmental quality. Our Built and Natural Environments is designed as a technical reference for analysts in state and local governments, academics, and people studying the implications of development on the natural environment.

The Local Government Commission’s Smart Growth Zoning Codes: A Resource Guide is intended to help local officials improve community livability through code reform.

Participatory Land-Use Mapping is a technique used to involve members of the public in exploring local and regional land-use planning issues. Residents are, in effect, put in the driver’s seat and challenged to devise solutions to the problem of meeting the community’s projected growth needs while protecting the community’s economic, environmental, and social well-being.

The Urban Land Institute's (ULI) California Smart Growth initiative offers this report on how local and regional leaders in the San Francisco Bay area are teaming up with the public and private sectors to make smart growth a reality.

The Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, in conjunction with the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, has released Partnerships for Smart Growth: University-Community Collaboration for Better Public Spaces. Written under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. EPA, the report profiles 13 university-led collaborations on smart growth initiatives.

Environmental Health & Engineering is hosting Pathways to Campus Sustainability, a series of webinars designed to provide you with the most up-to-date tools and knowledge necessary to manage a successful campus sustainability program.

The Vermont Forum on Sprawl has developed, in partnership with the Orton Family Foundation, a sophisticated new online tool that acts as an interactive ''consultant'' to citizens and local planners.

The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) offers Pedestrian and Bicycle Facilities in California: A Technical Reference and Technology Transfer Synthesis for Caltrans Planners and Engineers.

This site offers examples of how communities throughout the country are trying to achieve smart growth.

Cities and towns across the country are embracing smart growth as a better solution to meet the needs of their growing populations.

See NRDC's visions for how 70 U.S. communities could apply smart growth principles that accommodate growth and development while saving open space, revitalizing neighborhoods and helping cool the planet.

Cities and towns across the country are embracing smart growth as a better solution to meet the needs of their growing populations. Picturing Smart Growth from the Natural Resources Defense Council offers images of how 70 U.S. communities could apply smart growth principles that accommodate growth and development while saving open space, revitalizing neighborhoods and helping cool the planet.

The California Infill Parcel Locator website is a tool for pinpointing potential infill sites throughout the state of California. Such parcels are located in areas that have already been urbanized, but the sites are either completely vacant or have structures assessed at extremely low valuations, relative to the land itself.

The Pittsburgh Green Building Fund was created by the CL Fund to assist building owners and developers with the implementation of green building practices.

This guide provides a starter kit for a community member, city official, planner, or design professional to identify currently available planning tools and to assess their applicability and appropriateness to specific projects or issues, alone or in combination.

PLAN-135: Introduction to Smart Growth is a six-month, self-paced course designed for planners, local officials, developers and citizens interested in learning more about smart growth. William Fulton, regarded as one of the nation's leading commentators on urban planning, metropolitan growth, and economic development, provides a thorough introduction to smart growth planning concepts and offers practical analysis of smart growth plans and practices.

Planners Book Service, part of the American Planning Association's website, is the Internet's best source for books, reports, audio and video tapes, computer software, and curricula on planning and related subjects.

Planning & Environmental Law is a monthly journal that abstracts the 50 most noteworthy federal and state judicial decisions that pertain to planning and environmental law, and offers commentaries on the wide range of legal topics and issues pertinent to planning and environmental management, authored by the nation’s preeminent scholars and practitioners in the field.

Planning and Urban Design Standards is a comprehensive sourcebook on everything from regional plans to streetscapes. Edited by the American Planning Association and including extensive illustrations and concise explanations, this book is a quick reference focused on practical applications.

Planning for a Low-Energy Future from the American Planning Association and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy is a book that outlines how communities, businesses, and individuals can work toward greater sustainability.

The March 2010 issue of Planning finds a ray of hope in the national economy. Read about economic diversity in Michigan, the supermarket as a neighborhood building block, and an excerpt from a new Planners Press book about the essential elements of sustainable design. Members may read the entire issue online. Everyone is invited to read this month's featured article on Maryland's second generation of smart growth.

Updating his two previous books on growth management in the states, John M. DeGrove examines the history and current systems for planning and smart growth in nine states: Oregon, Florida, New Jersey, Maine, Rhode Island, Vermont, Georgia, Maryland, and Washington.

The R/UDAT (pronounced ROO-dat) program is a grassroots approach to help create more livable communities that combines local resources with the expertise of a multidisciplinary team of nationally recognized professionals. The R/UDAT program is offered to communities as a public service of The American Institute of Architects (AIA).

The Playbook is a web-based resource that provides strategies, tips, and tools that cities and counties can use to take immediate action on climate change through: Green building, green neighborhoods, and sustainable infrastructure. The Playbook is designed both for communities that are considering making the first steps toward these, as well as for those who want to take existing efforts to a new level.

The Governors' Institute on Community Design offers the online resource Policies that Work: A Governors' Guide to Growth and Development. This free resource lays out a systematic approach to smart growth policymaking at the state level. It is designed to provide governors and their staff and cabinet secretaries with hundreds of ideas about policies, administrative actions, and spending decisions that have actually produced smarter growth in other states -- ideas and outcomes that they may be able to replicate in their own states.

Post Carbon Cities: Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty is the first major guidebook on peak oil and global warming for local governments in the United States and Canada. It provides a sober look at how these phenomena are quickly creating new uncertainties and vulnerabilities for cities of all sizes, and explains what local decision-makers can do to address these challenges.

The Poundbury Series, launched in 2007, is a series of seven lectures and tours which are an essential experience for those involved in the planning, design and building of housing developments in the United Kingdom and beyond.

The 4th Annual New Partners for Smart Growth: Building Safe, Healthy and Livable Communities conference was held January 27-29, 2005 in Miami Beach, Florida. View the entire program and more than 60 PowerPoint presentations from select events, or order audio files.

The 2006 New Partners for Smart Growth conference was a national multi-disciplinary event that built on the tremendous success of the first four annual New Partners for Smart Growth conferences, held January 2002 in San Diego, 2003 in New Orleans, 2004 in Portland, and 2005 in Miami.

Conference organizers Penn State and the Local Government Commission (LGC) have made available presentations for most conference sessions as PDF documents in PowerPoint handout format. View presentations from the 2006 New Partners for Smart Growth conference at the resource link below.

The Virginia Sustainable Building Network (VSBN) sponsors an annual State of High Performance Schools in Virginia conference. Presentations from the May 8, 2008, in Charlottesville, Virginia, are now available.

Preserving and Promoting Diverse Transit-Oriented Neighborhoods is a report from the Center for Neighborhood Technology, Reconnecting America, and Strategic Economics -- working together as the Center for Transit-Oriented Development. The study reveals the significant diversity -- economically and racially -- currently present in transit-served neighborhoods, and suggests that additional development of mixed-income, mixed-race housing in these areas would respond to growing demand for affordable and livable communities while also providing numerous benefits to cities, regions, and the environment.

Protecting Water Resources with Higher Density Development is a new report from the U.S. EPA designed to help communities better understand the impacts of high- and low-density development on water resources.

The U.S. Census Bureau projects that U.S. population will grow by 50 million people, or approximately 18 percent, between 2000 and 2020. Protecting Water Resources with Higher-Density Development is a study that intends to help communities better understand the impacts of higher and lower density on water resources.

The American Planning Association (APA) has created a talking points webpage on Public Health and the Built Environment. Part of the AIA's Communities by Design program, these talking points provide facts and figures that support the argument for including public health concerns in decisions affecting the built environment.

Nearly every institutional purchase, from office paper to buildings, entails hidden costs for the natural environment and the world's people. Shifting just a portion of that spending away from harmful goods and services to more environmentally friendly alternatives can benefit ecosystems and communities, save money, and send a powerful message to markets on behalf of more sustainable options. This guidebook outlines steps to achieve that goal.

This new report focuses on how to adapt smart growth strategies to rural communities. Funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Sustainable Communities, the report examines the challenges rural communities face, including rapid growth at metropolitan edges, declining rural populations, and the loss of working lands. It highlights smart growth strategies that can help guide rural growth while preserving the unique rural character of existing communities.

The report focuses on three central goals: 1) support the rural landscape by creating an economic climate that enhances the viability of working lands and conserves natural lands; 2) help existing places to thrive by taking care of assets and investments such as downtowns, Main Streets, existing infrastructure, and places that the community values; and 3) create great new places by building vibrant, enduring neighborhoods and communities that people, especially young people, don’t want to leave. Featuring case studies from across the country, the report highlights how local governments, states, and non-profits have successfully implemented smart growth strategies to support rural lands, revitalize existing communities, and create great new places for residents and visitors.

To read the full report, visit the link below.

This report contains a set of recommendations to improve the economic and social well-being of California’s communities through better growth patterns.

The Project for Public Spaces (PPS) has identified ten qualities that contribute to the success of great streets. Streets account for as much as a third of the land in a city, and historically, they served as public spaces for social and economic exchanges. Great streets incorporate the elements described in the list below.

Rail~Volution has posted on its website more than 130 PowerPoint presentations from its 2005 conference, held in Salt Lake City September 7-10.

Rail~Volution 2005 offered more than 50 workshops addressing nearly every aspect of building livable communities with transit. These workshops featured many thoughtful policy overviews of livability issues, as well as hands-on, specific strategies that can be used and applied in conference attendees’ own communities.

Rail~Volution 2006, held in Chicago, Illinois November 5-8, 2006, offered more than 60 workshops addressing nearly every aspect of building livable communities with transit. These workshops featured many thoughtful policy overviews of livability issues, as well as hands-on, specific strategies that can be used and applied in conference attendees' own communities.

Rail~Volution has grown into the definitive national conference for building livable communities. The thirteenth annual conference will be held October 31-November 3, 2007, in Miami Beach, Florida, where Rail~Volution will again bring together a unique cross section of new and experienced citizen activists, developers, business leaders, planners, local elected officials, academics, transit operators, architects and federal, state and local officials. Conference organizers have issued a call for project presentations and core curriculum topics for the 2007 event.

Rail~Volution 2008, held in San Francisco, California, October 27-30, offered more than 60 on-site and mobile workshops, two plenary sessions, and networking events addressing nearly every aspect of building livable communities with transit. These activities featured many thoughtful policy overviews of livability issues, as well as hands-on, specific strategies that can be used and applied in conference attendees' own communities.

Does your trail have an award-winning design? Rails-to-Trails Conservancy and the American Society of Landscape Architects are proud to present the second Rail-Trail Design Recognition Awards. The awards will be presented at a ceremony during TrailLink 2005, Rails-to-Trails Conservancy's international trails and greenways conference.

How would you rebuild a city block? Where would you start? Where would you end? The Re:Vision Community is here to learn, discuss, share, expound and, ultimately, create a sustainable street that can be the blueprint for cities everywhere.

An important new set of tools to help local elected officials and planners make land-use decisions is available from the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission (NIPC). The 2040 Regional Framework Plan plan is the culmination of an extensive public-involvement process that included 200 workshops where 4,000 participants expressed their vision of how the region should address growth through the year 2040.

Redefining Urban and Suburban America: Volume 3 from the Brookings Institution Press describes anew the changing shape of metropolitan America and the consequences for policies in areas such as employment, public services, and urban revitalization.

On Thursday, June 9 at 2 p.m. ET, KnowledgePlex and the Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities will present a discussion about new strategies for communicating about affordable housing and smart growth.

The Regional Comprehensive Plan (RCP) is a problem-solving guidance document that responds to what the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) has learned about the region's challenges through the annual State of the Region report card. Through extensive outreach and input from the RCP Task Force, SCAG's policy committees, subregions, local governments and other key stakeholders, the RCP is a collaborative effort to address our region's challenges and set a path forward.

The Washington Smart Growth Alliance has published Regional Conservation Priorities 2008: A Call to Action, a juried list of programs and projects in the Washington, D.C. are that offer the most promise or of the highest urgency in promoting sustainability in the National Capital Region.

The Virginia Sustainable Building Network (VSBN) maintains a regional calendar listing green building events, plus a library of green building case studies indexed by region.

The Transportation and Land Use Coalition's (TALC's) partnership of more than 90 organizations works to maintain the San Francisco Bay Area's renowned high quality of life, achieve greater social equity, and protect our natural environment.

How is your region planning to accommodate growth in the next fifty years? Check out the highlights of the regional visioning efforts emerging around California and across the nation.

Removing Market Barriers to Green Development is a report from Northeast-Midwest Institute and the Delta Institute that examines what current market dynamics are inhibiting mass adoption of these practices, and what can and should be done to make green development the convention rather than the exception in the U.S.

This report from the Ontario College of Family Physicians summarizes pertinent information on the relationship between urban sprawl and health. It serves to identify the key issues that are relevant to the growing number of sprawl-related health problems in Ontario, which is comparable to U.S. situations and is far worse compared to Europe.

On April 8, 2010, HUD published a notification requesting entities interested in applying for the Sustainable Communities Planning Grant Program to notify HUD of their intent to submit an application. HUD requests that interested organizations call the HUD NOFA Information Center as soon as possible. The NOFA Information Center will ask for your organization name and address, contact name, email, and telephone number. Notification of intent to apply is not a requirement for application, but it helps HUD determine staffing requirements for review and evaluation of applicants. Interested entities are encouraged to begin the grants.gov registration process now as the full five-step process can take two to four weeks to complete.

Applications are expected to be due about June 5, 2010. Eligible applicants will be determined at a later date.

Details about grants.gov registration and how to submit notification of intent are available at the link below.

WASHINGTON – An updated U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report shows a continuing shift in development toward urban neighborhoods in the United States, despite a slow a real estate market.

This trend, described in EPA’s 2010 report, Residential Construction Trends in America’s Metropolitan Regions, shows that redevelopment continues in many urban neighborhoods. Taking advantage of opportunities to reuse land and to redevelop underused sites is a key smart growthstrategy. It helps communities protect natural lands from being developed, strengthens the local economy, and puts new homes, stores, and jobs within easy reach of surrounding neighborhoods.

The data show that compared to the early 1990s, the share of construction in urban neighborhoods was up 28 percent in mid-sized metropolitan regions that have promoted redevelopment of underused sites and development around transit, such as Portland, Ore; Denver, Colo.; and Sacramento, Calif. For example, in 2008 Portland issued 38 percent of all the building permits within its region, compared to an average of 9 percent in the early 1990s; Denver accounted for 32 percent, up from 5 percent; and Sacramento accounted for 27 percent, up from 9 percent.

The latest report shows that an even stronger trend toward urban redevelopment in the largest metropolitan regions continued in 2008. New York City accounted for 63 percent of the building permits issued within its region. By comparison, the city averaged about 15 percent of regional building permits during the early 1990s. Similarly, Chicago now accounts for 45 percent of the building permits within its region, up from just 7 percent in the early 1990s.

The original report, issued in February 2009, examined building trends in the 50 largest metropolitan areas from 1990 to 2007. The update incorporates data for 2008, which included several months of national economic downturn.

This report analyzes trends that are reshaping downtowns and inner city suburbs in metropolitan areas throughout the United States. “Parking lots, underutilized commercial properties, and former industrial sites are being replaced with condos, apartments and townhouses… Do such examples add up to a fundamental shift in the geography of residential construction?” The primary goal of this report is to clarify if there has been a shift toward infill redevelopment of established urban areas, and to determine in which regions the shift has been most significant.

To answer these questions, residential building permits for the 50 largest metropolitan areas were examined over an 18 year period (1990-2007) to determine the percentage of residential building permits issued by central cities and core suburban communities compared to suburban and exurban areas. This data shows that in several regions there has been a dramatic increase in the share of new construction in central cities and older suburbs. In 15 regions the central city more than doubled its share of residential construction including New York City (15 percent to 44 percent), Chicago (7 percent to 23 percent), Portland (9 percent to 22 percent), and Atlanta (4 percent to 13 percent).

In addition, the shift of residential construction inward has been particularly dramatic over the last five years. Although the housing market has slowed, the report believes that this shift will continue after the economic downturn ends. The report states that this represents a fundamental change in the real estate market as people seek homes in walkable communities closer to where they work. Demographic changes are also play a role with empty nesters and young professionals moving away from the suburbs to smaller homes in the city. This trend is most prevalent in mid-sized cities that are often thought of as being leaders in smart growth polices (Portland, Sacramento, and Denver) and large diverse cities with strong ties to the global economy (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami).

However, the report cautions that despite the increases in the number of residential permits in established urban areas, a large share of residential construction still takes place on previously undeveloped land on the urban fringe. Urban areas still account for less than half of all new residential units in most areas. The report also states that further research should be done to determine which policies have worked best to attract development into urban areas and discourage green field development.

The evidence is clear. On the whole, America's central cities are coming back with growing employment and increasing numbers of young people, empty-nesters, and others choosing city life over the suburbs. Unfortunately, not all cities are fully participating in this renaissance. Many cities are lagging behind their peers, especially older industrial communities that are still making the transition from manufacturing-based economies to more knowledge-oriented activities.

Re-Thinking Density to Create Stronger, Healthier Communities is the theme of this free PowerPoint presentation from the National Multi Housing Council. These visually engaging PowerPoint presentations shows how density can transform neighborhoods. They also offer compelling research to allay the conventional fears about density. Created by a collaboration between environmentalists and real estate organizations, the presentations are ideal to present at meetings of planning officials, civic groups (e.g., Rotary Club, Lions Club), neighborhood groups and chambers of commerce.

Two versions are available; one for urban audiences, another for suburban audiences. A leave-behind publication, Higher-Density Development: Myth and Fact, is also available through this resource.

The Northeast-Midwest Institute has embraced a new Revitalizing Older Cities Initiative. This initiative pulls from many of the long-standing policy issues associated with the Institute, including brownfields, urban food issues, energy, manufacturing, and environmental restoration policy.

RMI Solutions Journal is a tri-annual publication from Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI). This new design is now available in digital PDF format and can be downloaded directly from the RMI website.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) produced the fourth edition of the Road Map to Understanding Innovative Technology Options for Brownfields Investigation and Cleanup to assist a broad audience of brownfields stakeholders in identifying and selecting innovative site characterization and cleanup technologies during the redevelopment process.

The City of San Antonio celebrated its first annual Green Building Awards in May 2009. The event celebrated organizations that have made significant strides in improving the sustainability of their buildings.

The Mayor's Office of Housing (MOH), the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency (SFRA) and Enterprise have joined forces to invest at least $100 million worth of incentives to build 600 new homes in San Francisco that promote health, conserve energy and natural resources, and provide easy access to jobs, schools and services.

Sustainable San Mateo County, County of San Mateo, RecycleWorks, and the AIA San Mateo County Chapter are sponsoring the seventh annual Green Building Awards. These awards are given to projects that promote green, sustainable design and construction. The awards support environmentally friendly design in architecture and recognize the architects, builders, and owners of these green buildings in San Mateo County.

Savings by Design is a program to encourage high-performance nonresidential building design and construction in California. Sponsored by four of the state's largest utilities under the auspices of the Public Utilities Commission, Savings By Design offers building owners and their design team a wide range of services.

Founded in 1978, Scenic America is a national nonprofit membership organization dedicated to preserving and enhancing the scenic character of communities. It promotes scenic conservation by providing individuals and communities nationwide with technical assistance on scenic byways, place-sensitive road design, transportation policies, sign control, and other scenic conservation issues and by educating Congress and state legislatures on site-specific projects in various states. In addition, it produces a full range of publications on preserving the scenic beauty, open space, and quality of life that contribute to the environment and economy. Its Smart Growth/Scenic Stewardship Initiative seeks to bolster efforts to counter unplanned growth and help protect America's threatened scenic heritage. Scenic America is working with the SGN to help communities take steps to protect their natural beauty and distinctive character as they manage growth.

This powerpoint by Bruce Katz, presented to the Vacant Land Forum, examines the 10 steps to urban land reform. It highlights the steps with innovative case studies and programs from cities and counties that are struggling with vacant land and brownfields.

The Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance offers Shared Destinies: A Smart Growth Agenda for Massachusetts. This document lays out action steps to sustainable planning for the Commonwealth, including modernizing the way the state plans for growth, building a balanced transportation system, and ensuring that all residents can afford homes.

Shared Prosperity, Stronger Regions: An Agenda for Rebuilding America’s Older Core Cities is a report from PolicyLink demonstrating that, despite significant challenges, older core cities can become economically competitive places where all residents can participate and prosper. Shared Prosperity, Stronger Regions looks closely at five cities: Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, and examines how innovative economic development, land use, transportation, neighborhood revitalization, and housing policies are bringing about significant economic and social revitalization.

The Siemens Sustainable Community Awards recognize public-private coalitions for taking on the 21st challenge of sustainable development.

The National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) invites you to share a story, success, or research on sustainable practices in higher education at the 4th Annual Smart and Sustainable Campuses Conference, April 5–7, 2009 at the UMUC Inn & Conference Center, adjacent to the University of Maryland, College Park.

West Coast Environmental Law has developed a Smart Bylaws Guide to assist local governments to implement smart growth strategies through policy and bylaw changes. The Guide brings together the best practices of municipalities across British Columbia, and highlights other innovators in the United States.

This report offers examples of how community development interests and smart growth proponents can work together to achieve their goals. Examples from Chicago, Minneapolis, Oakland, Philadelphia, and Richmond, Virginia are included.

In 1997, Maryland burst into the national spotlight with the passage of its Smart Growth and Neighborhood Conservation initiative. The initiative gained broad national recognition and praise. Next year, 2007, marks the 10-year anniversary of Maryland's experiment with Smart Growth. Yet the question remains: Has Smart Growth in Maryland changed the development pattern in Maryland?

The National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) established the Smart Growth Action Grants Program to assist efforts to implement programs and activities that position REALTORS® as leaders in improving their communities by advancing smart growth.

With their public, private and nonprofit sector leadership, smart growth alliances are building a broad-based, regional consensus around growth and development patterns to encourage healthy communities that are economically beneficial and environmentally responsible.

Smart Growth And Climate Change: Regional Development, Infrastructure and Adaptation is a book that systematically brings together two strands of applied research that, to date, have been carried out separately -- ‘smart growth’ research and climate change adaptability research.

This resource list from the National Clearinghouse for Education Facilities (NCEF) includes web links, books, journal articles, and other documents examining schools in relation to issues of planning and community development, economic impact, conservation of open spaces, and smart growth vs. sprawl.

The Smart Growth Around America blog is a ''one-stop source for the latest news from Smart Growth America'' that showcases recent and developing smart growth issues from throughout the United States.

This 84-page publication examines how rural areas may use urban and suburban smart growth strategies to combat sprawl.

This report describes the concept of a smart growth audit and provides methods to implement one in your community.

Smart Growth Begins at the Local Level is a video from the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) that highlights the responsibilities and successes of local government policies while acknowledging the common concerns which elected officials and citizens encounter (e.g., neighborhood opposition, traffic, loss of open space, increased density, etc.).

The Smart Growth Canada Network provides smart growth learning modules through its e-Learning portal.

Grow Smart Rhode Island offers a Case Studies in Smart Growth series -- projects that illustrate multiple smart growth principles. Showcasing the success of smart growth projects can encourage others to follow the smart growth model.

New Westminster, British Columbia, has developed a Smart Growth Checklist to assist landowners or developers and their consultants to create the most sustainable project possible.

Audiotapes from sessions of the 3rd Annual New Partners for Smart Growth Conference, held January 22-24, 2004, are now available for purchase. More than 50 sessions were recorded from this event. Recordings are available in audiotape and CD format.

The Winter 2005 edition of On Common Ground features a series of articles on how smart growth principles can help create better schools.

Smart Growth for Coastal and Waterfront Communities, an interagency guide developed in consultation with the national Smart Growth Network, builds on the network's ten smart growth principles to create coastal and waterfront-specific strategies for development.

In Connecticut, the Capitol Region Council of Governments (CRCOG) partnered with the U.S. EPA to address the challenges and opportunities of growing smarter and building greener. Many of these challenges and opportunities are shared by communities and regions around the country. CRCOG collaborated with EPA’s Smart Growth Program to identify tools and strategies for implementing a state affordable housing program, HOMEConnecticut, to grow smarter, ensure healthy and affordable housing, and support long-term economic competitiveness at the local and regional levels.

The guidelines were developed for communities in Connecticut and around the country striving to get development and future growth that result in stronger neighborhoods, protected open space and watersheds, and healthier and more affordable homes. The guidelines also are applied to site-level conceptual plans for development that are featured in a companion report, Together We Can Grow Better: Smart Growth for a Sustainable Region.

Smart Growth Illustrated, from the U.S. EPA, provides visual examples of smart growth techniques as they have been used in different places. Although every example illustrates several smart growth principles, each was chosen to illustrate one specific principle.

The Smart Growth Implementation Toolkit, produced by the Smart Growth Leadership Institute, is a set of practical tools to help your community grow smarter. It will help you untangle the thicket of policies and procedures that get in the way of smarter growth and sustainable development.

Through partnerships with The Abyssinian Baptist Church, New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the Urban Technical Assistance Project at Columbia University and the Office of the Manhattan Borough President, Abyssinian Development Corporation (ADC) developed a strategy to expand the housing and commercial options for central Harlem. Over 200 affordable housing units were built with an additional 200 affordable units planned. These include 25 units of transitional housing for homeless families, 68 rental units reserved for formerly homeless families, and 135 rental units to accommodate low- and moderate-income families. The Abyssinian Neighborhood Project created 15,000 square feet of commercial space for five local businesses, which has helped revitalize the central Harlem business corridors.

Like many communities in northern California, Santa Cruz has seen its housing costs increase dramatically. These rising costs mean the city is struggling to retain teachers, police officers, and service workers. To address these challenges, Santa Cruz created an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) Development Program. Accessory units create separate residences by converting all or part of a garage or by building new structures on a homeowner’s property.

When the U.S. Navy announced in 1993 that it would close the Orlando Naval Training Center, the city of Orlando saw an opportunity to build a vibrant, mixed-use neighborhood that would make the base property once again part of the community. The city's Base Reuse Commission organized to plan the property's future, engaging citizens in hundreds of meetings over two years to help devise and refine a plan to redevelop the base. At visioning workshops, citizens described what they wanted: a variety of housing types, a vibrant main street, public access to lakes, and linkages with existing neighborhoods.

In communities across the country, aging shopping centers are losing business to larger and newer competitors. As these retail centers, known as ''greyfields,'' cease to be viable as shopping malls, they can often provide opportunities for redevelopment that meet other community needs. One good example can be found in Lakewood, Colorado. Facing the decline of its Villa Italia shopping mall, the city worked with citizens, civic groups, and a local developer to transform the property into Belmar-the real, walkable downtown that this Denver inner suburb had lacked.

The Belmont Dairy is a mixed-use, urban infill project in the Portland, Oregon, neighborhood of Sunnyside. Located approximately 1.5 miles southeast of downtown, Belmont Dairy has expanded housing and retail choices for Sunnyside residents, spurred reinvestment, and created a vibrant anchor for a changing neighborhood.

Bethesda Row, located in the central business district of Bethesda, Maryland, illustrates the revitalization of a suburban downtown area into a mixed-use, walkable shopping and restaurant district. It has become so successful it draws people from the surrounding county and Washington D.C.

A popular town in the Los Angeles region, the city of Pasadena wanted to maintain its unique sense of place and give its residents choices in where they live and how they get around. Through its Central District Specific Plan, adopted in November 2004, the city is encouraging housing in the downtown, near transit, and above stores. Design guidelines ensure that new development fits with community character.

The Community Preservation Initiative (CPI) is a statewide smart growth program that helps municipal officials and community leaders understand the potential effects of growth. It provides tools and technical assistance to encourage informed and balanced growth decisions and emphasizes education, not regulation.

To the residents of Davidson, North Carolina, located just 20 miles from Charlotte, the essence of their small town is great neighbors and great neighborhoods. This small community is setting the standard for creating healthy and vibrant neighborhoods in a historic setting. The high quality of life is attracting development, which the town accommodates partly by revitalizing its existing buildings. Its new neighborhoods incorporate a variety of lot sizes and housing types, including affordable housing, and neighborhood parks within a five-minute walk.

Since 2000, the Office of Quality Growth (OQG) in the Georgia Department of Community Affairs has helped communities learn about and implement smart growth principles. Its approach includes focusing assistance efforts on the communities that are ready to implement smart growth principles and educating communities about smart growth success stories in Georgia to foster peer-to-peer interaction and support among local officials.

Closure of the Gilbert & Bennett wire mill in 1989 left a 55-acre, contaminated industrial site in Redding's Georgetown section, the primary commercial zone for this town of 8,400 residents. By 2002, the facility that was once a major source of tax revenue had accrued unpaid taxes of over $1 million. To revitalize the area and protect public health, the town partnered with a developer who not only paid the tax lien in full, but also cleaned up the contamination and is redeveloping the site into a mixed-use neighborhood. This partnership has been good for the town and the developer-each benefits from the new homes, businesses, services, and revenue.

The Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) worked closely with community members to rebuild a formerly crime-ridden and dilapidated 120-acre hilltop neighborhood into a mixed-use, mixed-income, and environmentally sensitive community.

When Denver's Elitch Gardens amusement park relocated in 1994, it left behind a 27-acre site just five miles from downtown. On this site, the Denver Urban Renewal Authority (DURA) helped facilitate the vision, design, financing, and economic development of Highlands' Garden Village, an innovative, compact, mixed-use community that has become a model for development throughout the Denver area.

The state of Vermont promotes compact settlements surrounded by rural countryside. The Vermont Housing and Conservation Board (VHCB) supports this goal by funding affordable housing development in existing population centers and by preserving historic resources, farmland, forests, and public access to recreational lands. The agency pursues affordable housing, land conservation, and historic preservation initiatives under a single unique, synergistic program, which balances priorities.

North Natomas is a fast-growing planned community in Sacramento, California’s capital. In 2001, the city approved a master plan, designed according to smart growth principles, for the Natomas Town Center. Anchoring the community is Inderkum High School, a new two-story building on about 40 acres, a departure from California’s typical single-level buildings on 60-acre sites. It will share facilities with Los Rios Community College and a public library, and its athletics programs will use public park land and a community aquatic center.

The Naval Training Center in San Diego trained members of the U.S. Navy and U.S. Naval Reserve for 70 years. When it closed in 1995, the city took advantage of its historic buildings and its prime location on San Diego Bay to redevelop it as Liberty Station, which restores waterfront access to the public for the first time in 80 years, creates new parks, and establishes creative-arts facilities.

Consistently ranked among the top locations in the country to raise a family or establish a business, the Minneapolis-St. Paul region is experiencing rapid population growth. The metropolitan area is showing signs of growth-related stress: increasing traffic congestion, rising housing prices, and dwindling open space. Instead of trying to limit growth, the Minnesota state legislature passed the Livable Communities Act (LCA) in 1995 to provide the Metropolitan Council with a voluntary, incentive-based approach to help communities grow in a way that addresses many of the region’s issues.

In 1994, the Lowry Air Force Base closed, offering Denver and Aurora, the two communities with jurisdiction over the base's property, a chance to use the former military base to create a new neighborhood. From 1991 to 1993, the communities embarked on an intensive planning process with local residents and businesses. The reuse plan was completed even before the base closed, and this early planning contributed to the successful redevelopment.

For the past several decades, the national trend in school construction has been big buildings on large sites, often on the outskirts of town. Increasingly, however, communities are realizing that taking a school out of a community can have unforeseen repercussions, ranging from lower home values to increased traffic congestion to loss of green space. In response, citizens, parents, and school administrators are calling for schools that fit the needs of individual communities. These people recognize that schools do more than house children for the day. They affect home-buying decisions and traffic patterns. They present opportunities to create neighborhood centers for education and civic life. The Moore Square Museums Magnet Middle School exemplifies this approach to school siting.

Faced with increasing numbers of children who had to be bused to distant schools because schools in their neighborhood had no room, Milwaukee Public Schools decided to take action to not only create more neighborhood schools, but also to restore the communities around them. In 1999, the Wisconsin legislature approved the Neighborhood Schools Initiative. It authorized the Milwaukee school district to borrow up to $170 million to build or renovate neighborhood schools.

Columbia Villa was an isolated and distressed 82-acre public housing site. The Housing Authority of Portland (HAP) partnered with public and private stakeholders to redevelop the site and create New Columbia, a neighborhood built to improve economic opportunity, community livability, and environmental quality for both old and new residents.

Arlington’s smart growth planning approach places dense, mixed-use, infill development at five Metro stations—known as the Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor—and tapers it down to residential neighborhoods. The result, as of 2004: Over 21 million square feet of office, retail, and commercial space; more than 3,000 hotel rooms; and almost 25,000 residences, creating vibrant “urban villages” where people live, shop, work, and play using transit, pedestrian walkways, bicycles, or cars.

More than 5,000 community members, elected officials, and business leaders shaped the future of the Sacramento region through a series of workshops, regional conferences, web-based dialogue, and surveys. The Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) initiated this two-year process—the Sacramento Region Blueprint: Transportation/Land Use Study—to examine current land use and future growth patterns and to plan where and how the region should grow.

The San Juan Pueblo, just north of Santa Fe, New Mexico, has been inhabited for over 700 years. In 2000, San Juan Pueblo tribal members initiated a community planning process to articulate and implement a long-term vision for the pueblo. At community design meetings, the elders recalled, “There was always an eye on you as a child and everyone felt they could count on their neighbor.”

To give communities incentives to build more housing near rail stations, the City/County Association of Governments of San Mateo County created a Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) Incentive Program. It uses transportation funds to spur construction of needed housing and creates environmental benefits by giving people the option of commuting and running errands by rail. This program directly links land use with efficient use of the existing transportation system.

The Southside neighborhood, a 10-acre revitalization project, is one of Greensboro, North Carolina’s first significant mixed-use, infill projects. The city’s Department of Housing and Community Development developed a Traditional Neighborhood District Ordinance to assist Southside’s redevelopment. The revitalization, just one-and-a-half blocks from Greensboro’s historic main street, transformed a blighted area into a thriving, attractive district. The community capitalized on a rich stock of historic buildings and public spaces to restore this downtown neighborhood.

The redevelopment of Stapleton Airport is one of the nation's largest and most ambitious infill projects, converting Denver's old airport complex into 4,700 acres of homes, offices, shops, schools, and parks. Over six years, a grassroots effort of more than 100 public meetings gathered community input on reusing the site, creating a vision of ''a network of urban villages, employment centers, and significant open spaces, all linked by a commitment to the protection of natural resources and the development of human resources.'' The master plan emphasizes environmentally sound development, walkable neighborhoods, and lifelong learning. It rests on the principles of economic opportunity, environmental responsibility, and social equity. Stapleton will include a wide variety of housing choices, most of which will be less than a 10-minute walk from shops, schools, offices, and parks.

When Denver's Stapleton International Airport closed in 1995, the city saw an opportunity to use the land to create a great new neighborhood. Over six years, starting before the airport even closed, citizens, the business community, and the city and county worked on a development plan that committed to environmental and economic sustainability and social equity. The plan would generate economic development, enhance existing neighborhoods and businesses, protect environmental quality and open space, and offer high-quality, attractive homes to people with a range of incomes. The plan also encourages education, from preschool to ''lifelong learning'' for adults, and balanced transportation options, including walking, bicycling, public transportation, and driving. In 1999, the city selected Forest City Stapleton, Inc. as the master developer, and construction began in 2001.

Re-using former military bases and addressing the lack of decent and affordable military housing are concerns for many cities and the Armed Forces. At the San Diego Naval Training Center, the Department of the Navy addressed these issues with a development that serves as a welcome addition to the nearby Point Loma community.

In recent decades, the town of Barnstable, Massachusetts, a coastal community on Cape Cod, has experienced tremendous growth. Hyannis, one of the town's seven villages, saw growth at its edges characterized by low-density residential subdivisions and strip retail, while its downtown was plagued with vacant storefronts and disinvestment. This pattern strained local infrastructure and impacted the town's fragile natural resources and historic character.

The Wellington Neighborhood provides affordable and market-rate housing on a site that was once dredge-mined. The project recycles land, houses working families, and provides free transit to the nearby downtown. It helps the region avoid “mountain sprawl” by creating an attractive, compact neighborhood, a design that has fostered a strong sense of community in a short time.

Langley, Washington, is a small town on Whidbey Island in the Puget Sound, an hour away from downtown Seattle and Everett by road and ferry. The town is home to about 1,000 people and retains a village character despite being under moderate development pressure.

1000 Friends of Maryland promotes smart growth issues in the state of Maryland through its website, which includes legislative updates, action items, and news from across the state.

This discussion paper from the New York State Office of the State Comptroller is intended to help stimulate a vigorous debate on smart growth in New York State by providing a general background and helping to define major issues.

This report reviews recent smart growth practices that could have the greatest impact and potential for success in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Smart Growth in the States, a report by Keith Schneider, Writer-In-Residence at the Michigan Land Use Institute, reports on recent smart growth developments in more than a dozen states. The smart growth package -- environmental protection, transit investments, urban revitalization, curbing sprawl, collaborative planning and land conservation -- is steadily being embedded in new executive orders, legislative policy and new state law across the country.

Smart growth is managing, rather than reacting to growth. Read about it in the May-June issue of the City Flyer. Vancouver City utility customers receive the City Flyer in their utility bills.

A new groundbreaking report called Smart Growth is Smart Business profiles how business leaders are supporting smart growth policies and projects, and puts forth five key smart growth business actions.

The Vermont Business Roundtable, a non-profit coalition of 108 CEOs from the state’s most active private industries, is leading an effort to prevent erosion of the state’s rural character.

The Smart Growth Leadership Institute, the University of Southern California, and the University of Colorado, funded by a grant from the United States Environmental Protection Agency, have selected nine communities to provide implementation assistance.

The Smart Growth Leadership Institute (SGLI) offers profiles of nine communities that participated in its Implementation Assistance Program in 2004. These communities -- stretching from Florida to Alaska -- were selected in 2004 to work with the SGLI team in implementing smart growth policies.

The Smart Growth Leadership Institute is looking for communities that have made a commitment to smart growth but are struggling with implementation.

The U.S. EPA is seeking proposals from eligible organizations to develop and convene a prominent annual summit for key public officials and civic or private sector leaders who are noted pioneers in implementing the principles of smart growth.

SMART GROWTH MARYLAND is a blog written by members of the Maryland Department of Planning (MDP). The blog serves as a great forum for the exchange of ideas and news about Smart Growth, sustainable planning, livable communities, historic and land preservation and the like.

About the bloggers

Andrew Ratner is director of communications and education for the Maryland Department of Planning. During a 24-year career at the Baltimore Sun, he wrote about Smart Growth and blogging, so marrying the two seemed to make a lot of sense.

John Coleman is Public Information Officer for the Maryland Department of Planning. He has been with MDP for more than a decade.

Steve Allan has been with the Maryland Department of Planning for more than 10 years in various capacities, including as policy planner for infill and redevelopment, Smart Growth education and urban design. He now serves as education coordinator for the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP), the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System and planning commissioners.

The SGN Fact Sheet provides a quick overview of smart growth principles and issue areas, as well as a list of the Smart Growth Network's Partners.

The Smart Growth Network Information Kit is a set of resources that will provide you with a comprehensive introduction to smart growth. To make research easier, the publications are divided by topic area. You will also find presentations and fact sheets to share with others.

The Smart Growth Network offers an online forum for members to discuss issues of interest and share ideas on smart growth efforts.

Smart Growth Newsline, a publication by the Massachusetts Office for Commonwealth Development (OCD), reports on planning and development news from throughout the state and around the U.S.

The Winter 2006 edition of On Common Ground focuses on the far suburbs, the exurban areas beyond the edge of major metropolitan areas, and the smaller non-metropolitan cities.

Smart Growth on the Ground is an innovative program to change the way that development is done in British Columbia, by creating real, built examples of smart growth. This unique program helps BC communities to prepare more sustainable neighbourhood plans -- including land use, transportation, urban design, and building design plans.

In the 2009 book Smart Growth Policies: An Evaluation of Programs and Outcomes, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy collaborated with 18 leading land use researchers and planners to measure and compare outcomes in four states with statewide smart growth programs (Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, and Oregon) and four states without such programs (Colorado, Indiana, Texas, and Virginia). The investigation reveals great heterogeneity. No state did well on all smart growth principles or on all measures, although individual states typically succeeded in their top priority policy area.

The purpose of this Smart Growth Primer is to describe what kinds of strategies make up a smart growth approach to urban and near-urban development. At the same time, the Primer is an opportunity to share examples from the many communities in British Columbia that are already successfully using smart growth techniques.

Are smart growth concepts having an effect on planning and development in America? Is low-density sprawl continuing unabated, or has a new approach taken hold? The Summer 2007 edition of On Common Ground offers readers a progress report on smart growth.

Smart growth provides a means for communities to incorporate more compact building design as an alternative to conventional, land consumptive development. This selection of quotations is drawn from the Smart Growth weekly e-news summaries.

Smart Growth Quotations:
Smart Growth Overview

Smart growth recognizes connections between development and quality of life. It leverages new growth to improve the community.

The features that distinguish smart growth in a community vary from place to place. In general, smart growth invests time, attention, and resources in restoring community and vitality to center cities and older suburbs. New smart growth is more town-centered, is transit and pedestrian oriented, and has a greater mix of housing, commercial and retail uses. It also preserves open space and many other environmental amenities.

This selection of quotations is drawn from the Smart Growth weekly e-news summaries.

Smart Growth Readiness Assessment Tool

The Smart Growth Readiness Assessment Tool (SGRAT) is a set of online assessments for scoring how well a community is prepared to develop according to Smart Growth principles. The assessments provide communities with a baseline score, and can be used to measure progress.

Smart Growth Resources for Massachusetts Cities and Towns

This booklet from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts provides a comprehensive listing of financial and technical resources for cities and towns interested in promoting smart growth. The publication is produced by the Office of Commonwealth Development (OCD), which integrates energy, environmental, housing, and transportation policies, programs, and

Smart Growth Schools Fact Sheet

Across the country, school boards have abandoned smaller neighborhood schools in favor of large campuses located on the edge of the community. But many communities are discovering the benefits of using smart growth principles in creating schools that meet the needs of both parents and students.

Smart Growth Scorecards

Various organizations and a number of municipalities have developed scorecards that help communities assess their policies and proposed development projects. In an effort to help share the available resources with citizens, municipal officials, and communities, the Development, Community, and Environment Division at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has collected and organized this set of sample scorecards.

Smart Growth Shareware

Smart Growth America offers Smart Growth Shareware, a free CD-ROM featuring 100 smart growth publications.

Smart Growth Shareware -- v2

Version 2 of the Smart Growth Shareware cd-rom contains all the publications, presentations, and websites of version 1 plus more and is a great resource for anyone wanting to learn more about the smart growth field or educate others. Topics covered include public health, children and schools, land conservation and water, transportation and more.

Smart Growth Speaker Series Goes National

Through a partnership between the U.S. EPA, the National Building Museum, and Public Radio International's ''Living on Earth,'' many of our Smart Growth Speakers can now be heard on your favorite local public radio station.

Smart Growth Speaker Series: Spring 2009 Recordings Available

Listen to three new Smart Growth Speaker Series events now in the Smart Growth Online audio library. Audio from the February, March, and April 2009 events have been added to the website.

Smart Growth Speaker Series: Three New Recordings Available

Listen to three new Smart Growth Speaker Series events now in the Smart Growth Online audio library. Audio from the November and December 2008 plus January 2009 events have been added to the website.

Smart Growth Strategies for New England

This web site outlines the EPA's Smart Growth Action Plan for New England, as created after the 1999 Smart Growth Strategies for New England conference. The site outlines the key elements of the action plan, and includes a list of accomplishments to date.

Smart Growth Technical Assistance 2008 Request for Applications

The Development, Community and Environment Division in U.S. EPA's Office of Policy Economics and Innovation is seeking applications from states, regions, and communities that want to develop in ways that meet environmental and other goals. EPA will provide technical assistance to successful applicants as described below. The application deadline is May 8, 2008.

Smart Growth Technical Assistance Opportunities

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), and American Institute of Architects (AIA) have developed technical assistance programs to assist communities in meeting their individual development-related challenges and to help create examples that can serve as models for others.

Smart Growth Technical Assistance Program Summaries

The U.S. EPA is posting summaries of the technical assistance projects conducted under the Smart Growth Implementation Assistance program. The reports from each technical assistance visit will be added to this page as they are completed.

Smart Growth Transportation Guidelines

This report provides information and suggestions as to how to support smart growth objectives and concepts with transportation facilities and services.

Smart Growth Zoning Codes: A Resource Guide

This guidebook will help planners design a zoning code that encourages the construction of walkable, mixed use neighborhoods and the revitalization of existing places.

Smart Growth: A Guide to Developing and Implementing Greenhouse Gas Reduction Programs

Smart growth development, based on 10 key principles, benefits the economy, the community, the environment, and public health. This guide provides information on how local governments have planned, designed, and implemented approaches that encourage smart growth in their communities.

The guide is designed to be used by city planners, local energy managers and sustainability directors, local elected officials, regional planning agencies, metropolitan planning organizations, and citizen groups. Readers of the guide should come away with an understanding of smart growth principles and how they can be applied in practice, foundations and strategies for smart growth development, expected costs, and potential funding opportunities.

The guide describes the benefits of smart growth (section 2); planning and design approaches to smart growth (section 3); key participants and their roles (section 4); foundations for smart growth program development (section 5); implementation strategies for effective programs (section 6); investment and funding opportunities (section 7); federal, state, and other programs that may be able to help local governments with information or financial and technical assistance (section 8), and finally two case studies of local governments that have successfully implemented smart growth principles in their communities (section 9). Additional examples of successful implementation are provided throughout the guide.

The guide can be downloaded free at the link below.

This Smart Growth guide is one in a series of Local Climate and Energy Strategy Guides produced by EPA. While each guide stands on its own, the entire series contains many interrelated strategies that can be combined to create comprehensive, cost-effective programs that generate multiple benefits. Access the guides at www.epa.gov/statelocalclimate/resources/strategy-guides.html.

Smart Growth: A Toolkit for Realtors

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) has produced Smart Growth: A Toolkit for Realtors, a six-chapter publication that provides an overview of smart growth and its importance to the real estate community.

Smart Housing Zones

The Smart Housing for Economic Prosperity task force convened by New Jersey Future has crafted ''Smart Housing Zones,'' a voluntary state program designed to overcome a key obstacle: local opposition to residential zoning.

Smart Infill

The Greenbelt Alliance has released Smart Infill, a 72-page guide for civic leaders and local citizens that shows how the Bay Area can achieve more livable communities and more sustainable development by developing underutilized land within existing urban areas. The report presents 12 key strategies to bring about well-planned infill housing and mixed-use development. These recommendations include zoning changes, design guidelines, public participation processes, revised parking requirements, and preparation of ''Specific Plans'' coordinating neighborhood revitalization.

Smart Locations, Neighborhood Patterns, Green Infrastructure

In ''Smart Locations, Neighborhood Patterns, Green Infrastructure: A Look at LEED Neighborhood Development,'' an item from Preservation Nation, the National Trust for Historic Preservation blog, writer Barbara Campagna describes how LEED Neighborhood Development (ND) is in some respects as different from LEED 2009 as it is similar.

Smart Plans

The Montana Smart Growth Coaltion offers a comprehensive list of Smart Growth Model Plans and Regulations on its web site.

Smart Scorecard for Development Projects

The purpose of a Smart Project Scorecard (SPS) is to assist elected local officials, developers, investors, neighborhood groups and designers make better project-level decisions that achieve the Smart Growth objectives.

Smart, Green and Growing Planning Guide

The Maryland Department of Planning (MDP) created the Smart, Green & Growing Planning Guide in response to the many requests from State and local government officials, smart growth advocates and interested citizens to produce a concise reference to planning and smart growth in Maryland. This guide provides you with a brief introduction to planning in Maryland, emphasizing key planning laws and tools that guide smart, sustainable growth.

SmartCode

This resource has been updated. Please see SmartCode V9.0 at the resource link below.

SmartCode V9.0

The SmartCode is a model transect-based development code available for all scales of planning, from the region to the community to the block and building. The code is intended for local calibration to your town or neighborhood. As a form-based code, the SmartCode keeps towns compact and rural lands open, while reforming the destructive sprawl-producing patterns of separated use zoning.

Solar Powering Your Community: A Guide for Local Governments

Several years ago, the U.S. Department of Energy established the Solar America Communities program in an effort to speed up the nationwide deployment of solar technologies. Working through partnerships with 25 American cities, DOE's program helped to jumpstart new programs and initiatives in each of these locations and paved the way for even greater adoption by other localities in the future.

TheSolar Powering Your Community guidebook offers local governments proven examples of how to get started and move forward with a solar program. The guidebook is available for download at the link below.

Solving Sprawl: Models of Smart Growth in Communities Across America

Natural Resources Defense Council. 2001. Through 35 real-world stories, this book illustrates how people in cities, suburbs, and rural areas have found profitable, community-oriented alternatives to sprawl.

Southwestern Pennsylvania Citizens’ Vision for Smart Growth

Citizens’ Vision is based on expressions of concerned citizens and on past regional planning efforts. It provides policy recommendations on challenges and opportunities for the southwest Pennsylvania region.

Spartenburg Community Indicators Reports

Since 1989, The Spartanburg County Foundation has published indicator publications to effectively raise awareness of the key issues that impact the growth, health and quality of life in Spartanburg County, South Carolina.

Sprawl and Politics: The Inside Story of Smart Growth in Maryland

Sprawl and Politics: The Inside Story of Smart Growth in Maryland, a book by John W. Frece, traces the evolution of the Smart Growth program from its substantive underpinnings to the political and public relations strategies needed to assure the program's adoption.

Sprawl and Smart Growth

In Contrast: Smart Growth versus Sprawl uses text and photos to illustrate how alternatives to sprawl help build better communities.

Sprawl and Urban Growth

This essay documents ubiquitousness of sprawl and that it is continuing to expand. Using a variety of evidence, the authors argue that sprawl is not the result of explicit government policies or bad urban planning, but rather the inexorable product of car-based living.

Sprawl Costs

In 1996, a team of experts undertook a multi-year study designed to provide quantitative measures of the costs and benefits of different forms of growth. Sprawl Costs from Island Press presents a concise and readable summary of the results of that study.

Sprawl: The New Manifest Destiny

From the August 2004 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives journal, Sprawl: The New Manifest Destiny discusses the current state of sprawl on both national and international levels. This article includes listings of the Top Ten Sprawling U.S. and World Metro Regions, details the effects of sprawl, and discusses how sprawl continues, despite a growing knowledge of its effects.

Spring 2007 Smart Growth Speaker Series Audio Now Available

New audio recordings are now available from two Smart Growth Speaker Series events at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. Recording are from the April and May 2007 events; the topics are ''Large-Scale Revitalization in Small Communities'' and ''Smart Growth Strategies for Colleges and Universities.''

Starting Point: Louisiana Recovery and Rebuilding

More than 650 citizens, community leaders, architects, planners, engineers, business people, and public officials gathered in New Orleans November 10–12, 2005 for the Louisiana Recovery and Rebuilding Conference, the starting point for the planning and the rebuilding of damaged parts of the state that have fallen victim to the devastation of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

State Climate Action Best Practices

According to the U.S. EPA's State Best Practices webpage, states have found that a combination of clean energy policies, developed as a coordinated package, is the most effective approach to addressing climate and clean energy challenges. Typically, states have chosen policies to address clean energy areas like energy efficiency (EE), renewable energy (RE), and clean distributed generation (DG). This page presents a menu of 16 clean energy strategies including guidance, policy maps, and other supporting materials.

State Incentive-Based Growth Management Laws Database.

February 2000. Database of state legislation that provides financial and other incentives to manage growth and preserve open space. Database includes brief abstracts of enacted state legislation on such topics as conservation easements, land trusts, open space, smart growth and tax incentives, and a statutory citation for detailed reference to the provisions of each law.

State of Maryland

Maryland's Growth and Neighborhood Conservation initiative represents the nation's first incentive-based, statewide effort to reverse the costly, inefficient, and often unsightly patterns of development known as ''sprawl.'' The initiative employs the state's $17 billion annual budget as an incentive to encourage growth in areas where the infrastructure already exists or is planned to support growth. Its goals are to strengthen and revitalize older towns and cities, to permanently preserve the state's most beautiful and valuable natural resources, and to save taxpayers the high cost of building new infrastructure required to support sprawl.

State of the Fraser Basin Report

Sustainability Snapshot 4: The Many Faces of Sustainability is the 2009 edition of the State of the Fraser Basin Report, released February 19, 2009. The report flags progress in British Columbia's Fraser River Basin towards social, economic and environmental sustainability.

Strategy for a Sustainable Rockville

Strategy for a Sustainable Rockville, a report by the City of Rockville, Maryland's Environmental Management Division, Department of Public Works, was created to answer the 2006 call by the Mayor and Council, who committed to making Rockville a sustainability leader among Maryland communities. Since that time, the Mayor and Council and staff have been working to fulfill the ambitious vision for the City by 2020.

Summer 2007 Smart Growth Speaker Series Audio Now Available

New audio recordings are now available from two Smart Growth Speaker Series events at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. Hear Gene Krebs from Greater Ohio talk about how to win with smart growth, and Greg LeRoy from Good Jobs First tell about coordinating economic development incentives with land use planning.

Surface Transportation Policy Project

STPP is a coalition of more than 200 organizations working to ensure that transportation policies and investments conserve energy, protect environmental and aesthetic quality, strengthen the economy, promote social equity, and make communities more livable. Working with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), STPP co-authored Once There Were Greenfields, published by NRDC in March 1999. STPP and NRDC are also collaborating with the SGN on a toolkit for smart growth, including policy reports on sprawl and analysis tools on fiscal impacts and infrastructure investment; this is currently available at STPP's Web site at http://www.transact.org/toolkit. STPP's Quality of Life Campaign, which strives to focus media attention and public debate on transportation issues so that communities make the link between the quality of their transportation system, land use policies, and their quality of life.

Sustain Magazine, Fall/Winter 2010

The Fall/Winter 2010 issue of Sustain reflects current thinking in the area of green urbanism and urban sustainability in our cities. The issue features seven perspectives on the ideal city in terms of policy and planning. This publication (co-edited by John Gilderbloom and Matt Hanka) presents American and Dutch analysis on a range of topics including: downtown revitalization; the benefits of bicycling; neighborhood planning; equitable development; urban morphology; creating a culture of tolerance; and reducing carbon emissions.

Sustain is produced by the Kentucky Institute for the Environment and Sustainable Development (KIESD). Formed by the University of Louisville in 1992, KIESD provides the general public and the research community statewide with the tools and the space to work towards a brighter future. The Institute is a forum for conducting interdisciplinary research, applied scholarly analysis, public service and educational outreach on environmental and sustainable development issues at the local, state, national and international levels.

Sustainability and Big Cities

Sustainability and Big Cities features environmental scientist William Moomaw discussing the environmental challenges facing cities and what cities can expect over the next decades. This CD-ROM includes the session of the same name from the 2007 APA National Planning Conference.

Sustainability Assessment -- UC-Berkeley

The University of California-Berkeley has completed its first campus-wide sustainability assessment. This report documents the performance, highlights achievements, and identifies opportunities as UC Berkeley strives to become a more sustainable University.

Sustainability Leaders Program

The Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges (EAUC) is the United Kingdom's sustainability champion for universities and colleges, working in the sector, for the sector. With its long history of working on environmental and social issues, the EAUC will enable your institution to become a leading sustainable one.

Sustainability Leadership Academy

The University of Oregon's Sustainability Leadership Academy offers professional development seminars on sustainability practices. Each seminar is designed to give practitioners a theoretical foundation and practical tools to move an organization toward sustainable development.

Sustainability Planning Toolkit

The new Sustainability Planning Toolkit from ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability USA establishes for the first time the best practices to develop a local sustainability plan. With ICLEI’s toolkit, jurisdictions of all sizes can now follow a proven, straightforward, and flexible process to create long-term sustainability plans that bring together their individual environmental, economic, and social initiatives under one holistic vision.

The toolkit, which has been developed for ICLEI’s 600 U.S. local government members, is based on the planning model pioneered by City of New York for its renowned PlaNYC sustainability plan. The toolkit was authored by ICLEI and developed through a close collaboration between ICLEI and the City of New York’s Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability.

“ICLEI launched the first global initiative to develop the methods and tools for local sustainability planning in 1992 at the United Nations’ “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro. Since that time, ICLEI has supported thousands of local governments in scores of countries to develop their customized approaches for putting the complex goal of sustainability into local practice,” said Jeb Brugmann, ICLEI Global’s founder and current Executive Director of ICLEI USA. “This toolkit draws from the most recent best practices in the United States to help cities and counties take their sustainability planning efforts to the next level. With a sustainability plan to guide their actions, cities like New York, Minneapolis, Santa Monica, and many others have shown that they can more effectively combat climate change, green their buildings, update infrastructure, invigorate their local economies, and improve public health and quality of life for their community members.”

“Our message to all local governments is that the secret to a successful sustainability plan is a rigorous planning process,” added Brugmann, “and this toolkit walks local governments through what can be a very complex process.”

To reach their chosen sustainability goals, local governments can follow ICLEI’s Five Milestones for Sustainability process, which is the foundation of the toolkit:

Milestone One: Conduct a sustainability assessment
Milestone Two: Establish sustainability goals
Milestone Three: Develop a local sustainability plan
Milestone Four: Implement policies and measures
Milestone Five: Evaluate progress and report results

By following this process, local governments can create plans with strong, measurable goals that can be tracked over time. The ability to measure performance has been a key to the success of PlaNYC.

Inside the toolkit, local government staff will find guidance on how to structure their planning process, what types of strategies and measures to include in their plan, step-by-step guidelines to achieve each of the Five Milestones, best-practice examples, checklists, templates, and guidelines for organizing a team to develop the plan.

Visit the link below to view the toolkit’s table of contents, introduction, and related free resources. Only ICLEI member local governments, however, may download the complete toolkit.

Sustainability through Healthy Community Design

HealthScape is King County, Washington's program to promote improved public health and air quality through wise land use and transportation choices. ''Sustainability through Healthy Community Design'' is the title of their brochure that describes the links between neighborhood design and improved community health.

Sustainability: Science, Practice, and Policy

Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy is a new peer-reviewed, open-access journal that provides a platform for the dissemination of new practices and for dialogue emerging out of the sustainability field.

Sustainable Albuquerque

Sustainable Albuquerque, a website sponsored by the City of Albuquerque, is designed to inform and help residents make Albuquerque a sustainable city.

Sustainable Building Resource Directory

The Sustainable Building Resource Directory is a website-based information resource and searchable database of Green Building and Sustainable Development businesses, organizations, and programs for the mid-Atlantic region.

Sustainable Cities Award Call for Entries -- 2009

The Financial Times/Urban Land Institute Sustainable Cities Awards recognize outstanding and innovative programs that advance the application of sustainability principles to land use and thereby promote their incorporation in cities and in the general real estate industry. Award-winning programs will have global relevance, will add strategic value to companies and communities, and will enhance the environment.

Sustainable Cities Awards -- 2008

Nine outstanding programs from organizations around the world representing both the public and private sectors have been selected as winners in the first annual Sustainable Cities Awards program, sponsored jointly by the Financial Times and the Urban Land Institute (ULI).

Sustainable City Awards

The City of London, England, hosts a Sustainable City Awards competition each year. Most categories are open to communities throughout the United Kingdom, while some are limited to entities within the city of London.

Sustainable Cleveland

The Connecting Cleveland 2020 Citywide Plan includes a plan narrative that outlines policies and strategies surrounding topics of citywide and neighborhood significance such as housing, retail, economic development, education, recreation, arts & culture, and safety. It gives a general overview of each topic then further explains the assets, trends, challenges, and opportunities in Cleveland related to each.

Sustainable Communities for All Ages

JustPartners Inc. presents the ''Sustainable Communities for All Ages: A Viable Futures Toolkit.'' The Viable Futures Toolkit is a comprehensive, user-friendly resource that turns the challenges of an aging population into opportunities for all ages to thrive. It offers guidance to planners, policymakers, service providers, and funders about how to create solutions for older generations that simultaneously address needs of younger generations and their communities.

Sustainable Communities for All Ages -- Toolkit Highlights

JustPartners Inc. has added highlights of their Viable Futures Toolkit to the Sustainable Communities for All Ages website. The ''Toolkit in Action'' resource page includes links to case studies and feedback from communities who are using the Toolkit.

Sustainable Communities Network

The mission of SCN is to connect individuals and organizations nationwide to the resources they need to help make their communities environmentally sound, socially equitable, and economically prosperous. CONCERN, Inc. and the Community Sustainability Resource Institute co-direct the SCN and manage the Web site for the SGN. This comprehensive clearinghouse of information provides a wealth of information on such topics as sprawl, smart building and development, land use, brownfields, infill development, and financing. Resources include tools, case studies, searchable databases, a calendar of upcoming events, libraries of key documents, and news briefs.

Sustainable Communities Partnership Blog

In June 2009, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) joined together to form the Partnership for Sustainable Communities, an unprecedented agreement to coordinate federal housing, transportation, and environmental investments; protect public health and the environment; promote equitable development; and help address the challenges of climate change. This new blog focuses on the work of the Partnership, with interesting, informative columns relating to this national urban policy agenda.

Sustainable Communities Partnership Live Chat

The White House will host a live chat with the Sustainable Communities Partnership on July 15 at 2:00pm EST. The purpose of the chat is to promote the important work of the Partnership for Sustainable Communities and how it exemplifies the President’s broader metropolitan and urban agenda, and to take questions from a large interested audience. Take advantage of this opportunity to learn more about the Partnership’s progress, sustainable community policies, funding opportunities, and more.

The chat will be moderated by Derek Douglas, Special Assistant to the President on Urban Policy at the White House. You are invited to ask questions live at the link below. Or, you can submit questions in advance through Planetizen.

Sustainable Communities Symposium Presentations

Presentations from the September 26, 2007, Hampton Roads Sustainable Communities Symposium are now available online at the Hampton Roads Green Building Council website.

Sustainable Community Development Code -- Beta

The Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute has released a beta version of the Sustainable Community Development Code, a guidebook that provides extensive resources encompassing the broad scope of sustainable living.

Sustainable Community Development Network

A program of Sustainable Pittsburgh, the Sustainable Community Development Network (SCDN) partnered with leading organizations to produce a new series of Sustainable Community Essentials Resource Sheets, and also maintains an interactive web wiki that facilitates continued revision and comments to continuously improve the materials.

Sustainable Community Practices

Sustainable Community Practices from the AIA Center for Communities by Design is a draft document that offers a general overview of how-to guidelines, community indicators/benchmarks, and other similar sources as a reference starting point to understand the very broad and wide-ranging field of community sustainability.

Sustainable Design Assistance Application -- 2007

The Sustainable Design Assessment Team (SDAT) program from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) is an interdisciplinary community assistance program that focuses on principles of sustainability by bringing multidisciplinary teams of professionals to work with community decision-makers and stakeholders to help them develop a vision and framework for a sustainable future. Applications for the 2007 SDAT program will be accepted through November 30, 2006.

Sustainable Development and Green Design Professional Certificate Program

Learn about the concepts and principles of Sustainable Development and Green Design in this new professional certificate program offered by the University of California Regents (UCR) Extension Professional and Continuing Studies.

Sustainable Federal Buildings Database

The Sustainable Federal Buildings Database, sponsored by the DOE Federal Energy Management Program, is a web-based tool that provides easy access to a compilation of federal agency policies and guidelines on energy efficient, sustainable government facilities.

Sustainable Future Webinar

Listen to Debra Rowe and others as they present a 90-minute webinar on the latest trends in sustainability on campus. Several higher education experts highlight some of the best examples of implementing sustainable projects and practices. This recording is from the June 6, 2007 event.

Sustainable Huron

Huron County, Ontario, is undergoing a five-year review of the County's Official Plan, a land-use planning document that is a statement of where and how development should take place. The Plan includes the vision, goals and policy directions for development of the County, as established by the community in 1998 and 1999.

Sustainable Leadership Awards

CoreNet Global, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the International Interior Design Association announced winners of 6th Annual Sustainable Leadership Award for Design and Development on May 6, 2008 at the CoreNet Global Summit San Diego.

Sustainable Philadelphia: Clean and Green by 2016

The Philadelphia Urban Sustainability Forum, a unique coalition of groups working to make Philadelphia the greenest, most livable city in America, has produced the report Sustainable Philadelphia: Clean and Green by 2016, which outlines how the city can meet sustainability goals within the next ten years.

Sustainable Prosperity: Grow Smart Rhode Island's Briefing Book for Candidates

A Blueprint for Sustainable Prosperity and Enhanced Quality of Place is Grow Smart Rhode Island's 2008 Candidates' Briefing Book, a nonpartisan effort to promote better understanding of growth and development issues and various strategies and best practices to tap Rhode Island's full economic, environmental and social potential.

Sustainable Residential Design: Using Low-Impact Materials

This new (2010) resource from the American Society of Landscape Architects provides a host of useful information to help create sustainable and resource-efficient home sites. An excerpt:

“New and non-recyclable materials used in homes and landscapes consume enormous amounts of resources to produce and distribute, and then create additional waste when they are demolished -- they often aren't originally designed to be recycled. Waste materials create waste landscapes: landfills, massive incinerator systems, and multi-square-mile floating plastic garbage islands in the world's oceans.

Through ‘integrated site design,’ a comprehensive approach to sustainable building and site design, sustainable residential landscape architecture practices can not only improve water and energy efficiency, but also reduce waste. If part of a broader integrated site design, sustainable residential landscape architecture can eliminate waste created from producing and using design materials.”

In addition to a concise discussion of elements related to integrated site design, this resource also includes links to organizations, publications, resources, research, projects, and more.

Sustainable Skylines Initiative -- 2009

The U.S. EPA has issued notice of availability of funds and is soliciting applications from eligible entities to compete for financial assistance through the Sustainable Skylines Initiative (SSI).

Sustainable Urban Redevelopment and Climate Change

The Northeast-Midwest Institute has released Sustainable Urban Redevelopment and Climate Change: The Dual Benefits of Energy-Efficient Buildings in Energy-Efficient Locations, a report prepared for the Congressional Briefing at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C. on July 17, 2008.

Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design with Nature

Written by the chair of the LEED-Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND) initiative, Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design with Nature is both an urgent call to action and a comprehensive introduction to ''sustainable urbanism'' -- the emerging and growing design reform movement that combines the creation and enhancement of walkable and diverse places with the need to build high-performance infrastructure and buildings.

SustainLane -- Government Knowledge Database

SustainLane is an open-source knowledge database that speeds discovery, research and networking with more than 75 best practice documents and a secure directory of participating government officials from over 180 cities, counties and states.

Symposium 2005: Twenty Lessons from Maryland’s Smart Growth Initiative

John Frece, former spokesman for Maryland’s Smart Growth Initiative and currently with the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education at the University of Maryland, reviews the events that led to Maryland's Smart Growth Initative and the evolution of that landmark policy in the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law (VJEL).

Taming the Automobile: How We Can Make Our Streets More Pedestrian Friendly.

Planning Commissioners Journal. November/December 1991. Strategies for meeting pedestrians' needs, from the author of Accomodating the Pedestrian: Adapting Towns & Neighborhoods for Walking and Bicycling.

Teaching Smart Growth -- Model Courses

Teaching Smart Growth -- Model Courses is a selection of university course prospectuses compiled by the U.S. EPA that describe how smart growth principles are being used at U.S. colleges and universities.

Technical Assistance for Smart Growth

''The New Wave: Technical Assistance for Smart Growth'' discusses the wave of demand from towns across the country for technical assistance to help them implement the principles of smart growth.

The article reviews types of assistance being provided, the groups that are responding to requests for technical assistance, and how the help is being delivered.

''The New Wave: Technical Assistance for Smart Growth'' can be read online in volume 3, number 3 of Practicing Planner at the resource link below.

Technical Assistance Programs from the Smart Growth Network

Technical Assistance Programs from the Smart Growth Network is a free resource that provides a brief overview of technical assistance programs available from partners in the Smart Growth Network. Twelve different programs are featured in this PDF document.

Ten Principles for Rebuilding Neighborhood Retail

This booklet will help you identify the key issues that neighborhood streets face, determine the most effective ways to rebuild them and ensure their long-term competitive position, and set strategic principles to guide the community, public planners, retailers, and developers.

Ten Principles for Reinventing America's Suburban Business Districts

Fresh ideas and development opportunities are emerging in response to trends in demographics, traffic congestion, fiscal constraints, and opposition to suburban development. Based on a study conducted by a team of planning and development experts, this booklet describes how reinventing suburban business districts can deal with these trends and issues and can address the changing needs of the community.

Ten Principles for Reinventing Suburban Strips: Smart Growth Speaker Series, 3/11/02

This PowerPoint accompanied the March 11, 2002 Smart Growth Speaker Series featuring Michael D. Beyard, Senior Resident Fellow of the Urban Land Institute. Included are Principles to Reinvent Suburban Strips. An audio file of this event can be heard here.

Ten Principles for Successful Development Around Transit

What does it take to make transit stations work? The principles presented here can serve as reminders for communities, designers, and developers who may have forgotten them.

Ten Things Wrong with Sprawl

Ten Things Wrong with Sprawl is a report from the Environmental Law Institute that considers the future of America if the U.S. population continues its expected growth rate while development follows a general sprawl pattern.

TERI Database

TERI is the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Standing Committee on Environment's central storehouse for tracking and sharing new transportation and environmental research ideas. AASHTO's Center for Environmental Excellence maintains TERI and keeps all content relevant.

''The Affordable Housing Complex'': New York's Strategy to Include Quality, Density, and Design in Affordable Housing

The October 2008 edition of Metropolis magazine includes the feature ''The Affordable Housing Complex,'' an article that examines public policy regarding high-density public housing and a success story from New York City: privately developed mixed-income projects by prominent architects that reach back into the sky.

The Building Opportunities Network

The Building Opportunities Network, new from the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Main Street program, is a web-based resource that offers an online information exchange to redevelop vacant historic properties in your community.

The Case for Mixed-Income, Transit-Oriented Development in the Denver Region

The Denver, Colorado, region is the focus of this study that reviews the demand for housing near transit; explores the benefits of mixed-income, transit-oriented neighborhoods; analyzes the barriers to creating such communities; offers an array of tools for overcoming those barriers; and applies those tools in the context of four planned transit station areas in metro Denver.

The Case for Multi-Family Housing

The Urban Land Institute's (ULI) latest policy paper, ''The Case for Multi-Family Housing'' is now available for free on the web.

The Citizen's Guide to Planning

For decades, planning officials and engaged citizens have relied on The Citizens Guide to Planning for a better understanding of the basics of planning. The newly released Fourth edition describes the land-use planning process, the key players in that process, and the legal framework in which decisions are made.

The Coming Demand

Congress for the New Urbanism, 2001. This report reveals that market share of New Urbanist development will continue to expand quickly for the foreseeable future.

The Costs and Benefits of High Performance Buildings

The Costs and Benefits of High Performance Buildings is the third in Earth Day New York's Lessons Learned series and includes more than two dozen essays from green building practitioners.

The Costs and Financial Benefits of Green Buildings

This October 2003 report is an extensive cost benefit analysis of green building. It demonstrates conclusively that sustainable building is a cost-effective investment, and its findings should encourage communities across the country to “build green.”

The Future of Infill Housing in California

''The Future of Infill Housing in California: Opportunities, Potential, Feasibility, and Demand'' is a report prepared by a team of researchers at the Institute of Urban and Regional Development that provides the first statewide assessment of infill housing development potential for California communities.

The Globe Awards for Environmental Excellence -- 2006 Winners

The GLOBE Foundation and The Globe and Mail (Canada's national newspaper) recognize outstanding achievement in environmental stewardship with the GLOBE Awards for Environmental Excellence. The Globe Foundation is please to announce the winners of the fifth annual GLOBE Awards for Environmental Excellence.

The Green Initiative Fund

The Green Initiative Fund (TGIF) is a grant-making fund for sustainability projects on UC Berkeley's campus. TGIF originated at UC Santa Barbara and now has spread to six of the ten UC campuses. About $250,000 per year is available for grants. All students, faculty, and staff are eligible to submit project proposals. Projects will be selected for funding by an annually appointed Grant Making Committee consisting of students, faculty, and staff, in which students have the majority vote.

TGIF has opened the 2010 grant cycle and is now accepting submissions of project abstracts. The requirements for applying for a 2010 grant now require the submission of an abstract to be approved by the committee prior to submitting a full grant application.

The first deadline for project abstracts is January 19, 2010. Final deadline for ALL project abstracts is February 15, 2010.

The Green Quotient: ULI Collection of Interviews

From the Urban Land Institute (ULI) comes The Green Quotient, a book of interviews with cutting-edge thinkers around the world, based on The Green Quotient column that appears in Urban Land magazine.

The Healthy Development Measurement Tool

The Healthy Development Measurement Tool (HDMT) from the San Francisco Department of Public Health is a comprehensive, online evaluation metric to consider health needs in urban development plans and projects.

The Learning Environment: Lessons in Smart and Sustainable Campuses -- Call for Projects

Society for College and University Planning (SCUP) invites colleges and universities in the U.S. that are in the initial stages of a project addressing campus environmental issues to propose their project for a specialized workshop and to receive expert advice intended to further their project goals.

The New American City

The Noisette Company, designers of the Noisette 3,000 acre city-within-a-city in North Charleston, South Carolina, is now making plans for the ''New American City'' available through its website free of charge.

The New Politics of Planning

The New Politics of Planning from the Urban Land Institute is a new book that chronicles land use controls used in the past generation, and then describes recent trends that show how states are changing their perspective.

The New Transit Town

The New Transit Town: Best Practices in Transit-Oriented Development is an edited volume that brings together experts in planning, transportation and sustainable design to examine the first generation of TOD projects and derive lessons for the next generation.

The New Urbanism: An Alternative to Modern, Automobile- oriented Planning and Development.

New Urban News, May 21, 1999. This article is a good introduction to New Urbanism and includes a list of principles and prototypes

The North American Eco-Municipality Network

The North American Eco-Municipality Network (NAEMN) is a network of existing and emerging eco-municipalities with partners at state, national, and international levels, designed to share information, resources and experiences. This report lists partner communities and provides an overview of how the NAEMN formed, its objectives, and success stories.

The Path (Plan) Not Taken.

Planning Commissioners Journal, Summer 1998. Lessons from the defeat of a mixed use, high density plan, by neighborhood opposition.

The Plan for Harvard in Allston

This draft report from January 2007 provides a view at the Plan for Harvard in Allston -- a long-term vision that will see the existing Cambridge campus expand into 200 acres of adjacent Allston.

The Polycentric City Presentations

Congress for New Urbanism announces that presentations from CNU XIII: The Polycentric City are now available online. The June 2005 event featured more than 80 tours, seminars, salons, and other programs.

The Smart Growth Manual

Everyone is calling for smart growth, but what exactly is it? In The Smart Growth Manual noted new urbanists Andres Duany and Jeff Speck, who co-authored the acclaimed Suburban Nation, provide a thorough answer. This full-color manual, written with Mike Lydon, organizes the latest contributions of new urbanism, green design, and healthy communities into a comprehensive handbook. It is intended to be a central resource for those who aim to put smart growth into practice, and to assess the work of those who purport to do so.

The Smart Growth Manual presents a clear blueprint for developing cities and suburbs in the most user-friendly, cost-efficient, and environmentally sustainable manner. The authors explain how to create and enhance mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly communities as an alternative to suburban sprawl. They also cover preservation of natural amenities and the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Neighborhood Development standard.

With their landmark book Suburban Nation, Andres Duany and Jeff Speck “set forth more clearly than anyone has done in our time the elements of good town planning” (The New Yorker). With this companion volume, the authors have organized the latest contributions of new urbanism, green design, and healthy communities into a comprehensive manual, fully illustrated with the built work of the nation’s leading practitioners.

“Simply put, we believe that new places should be designed in the manner of existing places that work,” say the authors. “The old, dependable neighborhood structure is the very heart of smart growth. Its details are missing from most books on the subject, and they are not sufficiently emphasized in the LEED standards. Restoring the centrality of the neighborhood structure to the American environmental movement would be the most important contribution of this manual. It has been a struggle to relearn the full range of techniques surrounding good neighborhood design, but the last decades have witnessed great progress toward this essential goal. We hope that this manual gets us there sooner.”

The Smart Growth Tool Kit

ULI has a history of providing best practice case studies for various types of development projects. This tradition continues as ULI seeks to elevate the smart growth dialogue by providing examples of projects that reflect smart growth characteristics.

The Smart Growth Toolkit

There are many complex and technical issues involved in building smarter communities. The Smart Growth Tool Kit from Smart Growth BC provides an overview of key sustainability issues including an introduction to smart growth, smart growth tools, citizen involvement strategies and references on additional information sources for those who want to know more.

The SmartCode Solution to Sprawl

The SmartCode Solution to Sprawl from the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) is a practical guide to changing unsustainable land use patterns. The SmartCode is a comprehensive zoning tool designed by a diverse group of planners, designers, attorneys, developers, and concerned citizens led by Andres Duany, the noted land use expert and one of today's foremost urban planners.

The Sophie Prize for Sustainable Development -- 2008 Award

The Sophie Prize is an annual international award (U.S. $100,000) for environment and sustainable development. Established in 1997 by Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder and his wife Siri Dannevig, the Sophie Prize was created to inspire people working towards a sustainable future.

The State of Smart Growth

The State of Smart Growth is the theme for the Summer 2004 issue of On Common Ground, a twice-yearly publication from the Government Affairs office of the National Association of Realtors®.

The State of the Commonwealth: Is PA Moving Toward a Sustainable Future?

This report by the Pennsylvania Consortium for Interdisciplinary Environmental Policy identifies positive trends toward sustainability in Pennsylvania in a few areas, but also recognizes some trends that indicate the state is experiencing a decrease in the resilience of its environment, economy, and communities.

The Sustainable Future

The Summer 2008 issue of On Common Ground presents the many approaches that Realtors®, home builders, school officials, environmentalists, public officials, and concerned citizens are using to shape communities into sustainable human environments -- communities that make better use of our resources and reduce the damage we leave behind.

The University as Developer

Tips for Controlling Strip Development

Planning Commissioners Journal. May 1992. Ross Moldoff provides his thoughts on some lessons he's learned during twelve years as planning director of a New Hampshire town.

TOD 101: Why Transit-Oriented Development And Why Now?

Reconnecting America presents TOD 101: Why Transit-Oriented Development And Why Now?, a colorful 24-page ''picture book'' designed in an easy-to-read format that illustrates how shifting demographics and the changing real estate market have opened up an unprecedented window of opportunity for transit-oriented development.

TOD 202: Station Area Planning

Station Area Planning: How To Make Great Transit-Oriented Places is the first in a series of ''TOD 202'' guidebooks from Reconnecting America that promote best practices in transit-oriented development.

Toolbox for Local Officials

The Local Government Environmental Assistance Network has provided this toolbox as a resource to assist local government officials in their efforts to protect the environment and public health.

Toolkit for Affordable Housing Development

The Toolkit for Affordable Housing Development from the Washington Area Housing Partnership is a compilation of policies and planning tools local governments can use to preserve and promote affordable housing development in their respective communities.

Tools for Smart Growth in Montana

New from the Montana Smart Growth Coalition is Tools for Smart Growth in Montana, an online collection of success stories on how communities and counties in Montana and the intermountain West are making smart growth goals a reality.

Tourism And The Livable City: The New Boston Discovers The Old Boston.

Proceedings APA Online National Conference. Boston, 1998. Tempe AZ: ASU College of Architecture and Environmental Design P, 1999. Boston's success as tourist city can be attributed both to the city's rich historic traditions as well as to its more recent economic development. Effective planning, community activism, and civic leadership have been key factors in the creation of a livable city which is characterized by a high integration of economic development, historic preservation, sensible urban design, and community development. Boston's experience demonstrates that tourism can be successfully integrated into the cultural and spatial fabric of a working city.

Toward a Sustainable Community

The purpose of this toolkit is to provide ideas and descriptions of specific actions that a local government can take to transform itself into a model of sustainable practices. These practices can result in cost savings and increased employment, and enhance environmental quality and community well-being. The message of this toolkit is simple: local governments can lead by example.

Transit Friendly Development Newsletter

Transit-Friendly Development is a newsletter designed to keep municipal officials, planners and advocates up-to-date on the potential for development and redevelopment around transit stations. Topics include an array of information on transit-oriented strategies both in New Jersey and around the country.

Transit-Oriented Development Website -- Massachusetts

Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) produces a website featuring links and resources for Transit-Oriented Development (TOD).

Transit-Oriented Development: Selected References

This InfoPacket from the Urban Land Institute (ULI) focuses on references for Transit-Oriented Development and is approximately 150 pages in length.

Transportation -- Invest in our Future: A New Vision for the 21st Century

Congress created the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission and directed it to develop a ''conceptual plan'' to ensure that the surface transportation system will continue to serve the needs of the United States over at least the next 30 years. During a series of hearings across the country, Commission members themselves have called for the development of a ''bold national vision'' for transportation. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), in collaboration with several industry partners, has developed a national transportation vision which seeks to do both.

Transportation and Sustainable Campus Communities

Transportation and Sustainable Campus Communities presents a comprehensive examination of techniques available to manage transportation in campus communities. It gives readers the understanding they need to develop alternatives to single-occupancy vehicles, and sets forth a series of case studies that show how transportation demand management programs have worked in a variety of campus communities, ranging from small towns to large cities.

Transportation Improvement Program

''A Guide for Municipal Officials, Special Interest Groups, and Citizens.'' A pamphlet explaining how municipalities and interest groups can get involved in the region's transportation project development process.

Travel and Environmental Implications of School Siting

Travel and Environmental Implications of School Siting is the first study to empirically examine the relationship between school locations, the built environment around schools, how kids get to school, and the impact on air emissions of those travel choices.

True Urbanism: Cities Embracing Density

True Urbanism, a book from the American Planners Association, is a vivid account of cities small and large emerging from the cobwebs of late 20th century development that will show communities with lingering antiurban tendencies how to embrace density as destiny.

Trust for Public Land

Founded in 1972, TPL helps agencies and communities protect land for parks, open space, and other public purposes. TPL brings real estate expertise, transaction skills, and innovative public financing tools to federal, state, local, and private partners. It works to create urban parks and greenways, protect close-to-home recreational open space, promote reuse of brownfields, and generate regional strategies for watershed protection. Communities seek TPL's help in evaluating the need for open space and generating public support and funding for land protection. In its work with the SGN, TPL promotes land conservation as a flexible, non-regulatory tool to shape growth and create livable communities.

Turning Brownfields into Mixed-Use Developments

This publication from the National Conference of State Legislatures reports on how brownfields can be transformed and become an engine for prosperity and community revitalization.

Turning Green into Gold Seminars

If you are an architect, designer, facility manager, or real estate developer these seminars are for you. Green building, environmentally friendly or whatever you may call it might sound like a tree-hugging frill -- in reality it makes a lot of financial sense.

U.S. EPA, Development, Community and Environment Division

The EPA serves as resource to the Smart Growth Network for research, outreach, technical assistance and analysis on issues of environmental quality, Smart Growth and the built environment. EPA collaborates with public, private and non-profit organizations to 1) assess the environmental implications of current development practices and patterns; 2) provide technical support, analytical tools and information to communities and organizations that enables them to make development decisions that improve environmental quality, and further economic and community development; 3) foster partnerships among regional and local stakeholders that enable local formulation and implementation of development solutions; and 4) partner with EPA offices and regions to reward developers and localities whose actions and policies result in environmentally sound development. EPA works with other Smart Growth Network partners in coordinating network activities and programs, linking people and organizations through the network, developing informational and outreach materials, and identifying and overcoming financial and policy barriers to smart growth.

U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Initiative

Many cities, in this country and abroad, already have strong local policies and programs in place to reduce global warming pollution, but more action is needed at the local, state, and federal levels to meet the challenge. On February 16, 2005 the Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement to address climate disruption, became law for the 141 countries that have ratified it to date. On that day, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels launched this initiative to advance the goals of the Kyoto Protocol through leadership and action by at least 141 American cities.

ULI Development Case Studies

ULI offers a growing library of best practice case studies for various types of development projects. This tradition continues as ULI seeks to elevate the smart growth dialogue by providing examples of projects that reflect smart growth characteristics.

ULI Smart Growth Awards -- 2005

The Urban Land Institute, San Diego/Tijuana chapter, presented its first-ever Smart Growth Awards in June 2005 to recognize mixed-use and transit-oriented development -