| 4. Smart Growth:
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"Smart growth" is certainly on the lips of almost every planner these days. While it can be a slippery, hard-to-define phrase (for more on this, see Greg Dale's article, Smart Growth, in the Spring 2003 Planning Comm'rs Journal) these four Web sites offer comprehensive, well-organized, materials on how "smart growth" relates to just about every aspect of local planning you can think of (i.e., transportation, housing, growth management, open space preservation, brownfields, historic preservation, sustainable development, and so on).
Smart Growth Online is run by the Sustainable Communities Network (SCN), and supported with funding from the U.S. EPA. One good way of navigating this large Web site, is by starting from their page with links to 10 smart growth principles.
The Smart Communities Network is run by the U.S. Dept. of Energy, and focuses on sustainable development practices and (not surprisngly) energy conservation and efficiency.
Smart Growth America, perhaps the most comprehensive of all the smart growth web sites, reflects the efforts of a coalition of more than 100 state and national organizations. The Smart Growth America web site provides good, concise summaries of the key elements of smart growth, as well as easy access to dozens of research papers and reports available online.
While based in California, and with a bit of a West-coast focus, the non-profit Local Government Commission also offers a comprehensive array of well-organized information (and links) related to "livable communities" (one of the key aims of "smart growth"). The LGC's work is based on the Ahwahnee Principles. Its site is another excellent resource for citizen planners needing more information on just what smart growth involves.
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