Smart Growth Defined

Smarter Growth Principles

Overall Principles

1. The basic unit of planning is the neighborhood. A neighborhood standing alone can be a village or a town. A cluster of neighborhoods becomes a community and ultimately a bigger town or city. (See Walkable Communites)
2. The neighborhood is limited in physical size, with a well-defined edge and a focused center. The size of the neighborhood is defined as a 5-minute walking distance (or a quarter-mile) from the edge to the center; thus, a 10-minute walk edge to edge, or one-half a square mile. Human scale is the standard, with automobiles permitted, but not taking precedence over human needs, including aesthetic needs. The neighborhood contains a public transit stop.
3. The secondary units of assembly are corridors and districts. Corridors form the boundaries between neighborhoods, both connecting and defining them, and can incorporate natural features.
4. The neighborhood is emphatically of mixed-use and provides housing for people of different incomes. Buildings are compatible in size and disposition to the street. The daily needs of life are accessible within the 5-minute walk. Commerce is integrated with residential and industrial use, though not necessarily on the same street in a given neighborhood. Apartments are permitted over stores. There is a mixture of housing types, including apartments, single-family, duplex, accessory apartments, and out-buildings, disciplined in mass and location. No minimum square-footage requirements.
5. Buildings are disciplined on their lots in order to successfully define public space. The street is understood to be the preeminent form of public space and buildings that define it are expected to honor and embellish it through fundamental unities of massing, fenestration, materials, roof pitch, within which many variations may function harmoniously. Other public space includes parks, farmers’ markets, and public squares.
6. The street pattern is conceived as a network in order to create the greatest number of alternative routes from one part of the neighborhood to another. This has the beneficial effect of relieving vehicular congestion. Cul-de-sacs are strongly discouraged.
7. Civic buildings (town halls, churches, schools, libraries, museums) are placed on preferential building sites, such as the frontage of squares, neighborhood centers, and where street vistas terminate, in order to serve as landmarks and reinforce their symbolic importance.
8. Outlying large-scale employment and residential complexes designed so that transit can effectively and efficiently serve them. This is done by clustering buildings and by creating a transit-friendly internal circulation system.
9. Large-lot, auto-dominated, dispersed, single-use pattern of development is changed to a pattern with a mix of land uses that easily relate to pedestrian activity and that have a focal point, or "center", near to or at the transit station itself.

Additional Transit Principles (Example see Richmond Highway Needs Light Rail)

10. In the case of bus routes or light rail transit corridors, the transit-friendly pattern of development may extend linearly along the route of service, with clusters of activity at the individual stops.
11. Land use decisions made with the objective of encouraging residents to use transit as an alternative to the automobile for at least one or more of their trips between home, work, shopping, school, or services.
12. Land uses are organized in ways that encourage workers, visitors, and others coming to your community to use transit.
13. A transit station or stop is a visible point of identity for the neighborhood it serves.
14. Access to the transit station or stop is along clear, direct, and convenient routes.
15. Continuous and safe sidewalks and pathways make pedestrian access easy.
16. Bike paths and storage locations encourage bicycle access.
17. Safe and comfortable places to wait and to meet others are furnished.
18. Major points of origin or destination for transit riders are easy and interesting walking distances from the transit station or stop.
19. A mix of land uses is present.
20. Essential services and conveniences are located in, or in close proximity to, the transit station (e.g., day care center, dry clean shop) facilitating "trip-linking" and thus eliminating the need to make an additional trip.
21. Safe, well-lit, attractive areas are provided for all-day parking, drop-off and pick-up, and direct transfer between modes of transit.
22. An overall environment is created that is active, human scaled, and visually diverse and interesting, where people are encouraged to walk.
23. A sense of safety, security, and predictability is created.