Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about Smart Growth

Raleigh’s Smart Plan to Grow Inward

By Angie Schmitt | Oct 18, 2012 | No Comments

Growing Sun Belt cities aren’t generally known for their sustainable urban form. But Raleigh, North Carolina is putting the finishing touches on a plan that could break the mold. Raleigh has been working to overhaul its zoning codes with a plan that hits all the right notes: prioritizing transit-oriented, infill, and mixed-use development. But one […]

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NRDC Poll: Americans Support New Transit Twice as Much as New Roads

By Tanya Snyder | Sep 12, 2012 | No Comments

When asked what would solve traffic problems in their community, 42 percent of Americans say more transit. Only 20 percent say more roads. And 21 percent would like to see communities developed that don’t require so much driving. Two-thirds support local planning that guides new development into existing cities and near public transportation. That’s the […]

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Tennessee DOT Moves Past Road-Widening as a Congestion Reduction Strategy

By Tanya Snyder | Aug 30, 2012 | No Comments

In the late eighties and nineties, every traffic issue the Tennessee Department of Transportation faced was assigned the same solution: a bypass. But over the years, the department has come around to a new way of doing things, according to 40-year TDOT veteran Ralph Comer. Comer says the current commissioner, John Schroer, wants to become […]

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Governors Get on Board With Smart Growth

By Tanya Snyder | Aug 2, 2012 | No Comments

As yesterday’s post about Oklahoma City’s fight to replace a downtown highway with a real urban boulevard illustrated so well, cities are often at the vanguard of smart urban planning and transportation choices while state-level agencies can be laggards. So it’s nice to see some governors and ex-governors stepping forward to emphasize the value of […]

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Study Predicts “Resilient Walkable” Places Will Lead the Housing Recovery

By Tanya Snyder | May 18, 2012 | No Comments

This morning, a Minnesota Public Radio host asked me if the exurbs, whose growth rate flattened when the recession hit, are going to come back. Lots of people from far-distant suburbs like Blaine and Farmington called in, saying they like the way of life out there – they like having acres of trees buffering them […]

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Wastefulness

By Charles Komanoff | Feb 6, 2012 | 19 Comments

The Republican presidential campaign recently produced a couple of characteristic bits of what Americans, for lack of a better word, call “news”: Newt Gingrich declaring that New Yorkers “live in high rises and ride the subway” and thus don’t care about gasoline prices; and Tea Party “activists” in Virginia, Florida and Maine convinced that smart-growth […]

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