Principles of Smart Growth

• Create Range of Housing Opportunities and Choices
  Providing quality housing for people of all income levels is an integral component in any smart growth strategy.

• Create Walkable Neighborhoods
  Walkable communities are desirable places to live, work, learn, worship and play, and therefore a key component of smart growth.

• Encourage Community and Stakeholder Collaboration
  Growth can create great places to live, work and play -- if it responds to a community’s own sense of how and where it wants to grow.

• Foster Distinctive, Attractive Communities with a Strong Sense of Place
  Smart growth encourages communities to craft a vision and set standards for development and construction which respond to community values of architectural beauty and distinctiveness, as well as expanded choices in housing and transportation.

• Make Development Decisions Predictable, Fair and Cost Effective
  For a community to be successful in implementing smart growth, it must be embraced by the private sector.

• Mix Land Uses
  Smart growth supports the integration of mixed land uses into communities as a critical component of achieving better places to live.

• Preserve Open Space, Farmland, Natural Beauty and Critical Environmental Areas
  Open space preservation supports smart growth goals by bolstering local economies, preserving critical environmental areas, improving our communities quality of life, and guiding new growth into existing communities.

• Provide a Variety of Transportation Choices
  Providing people with more choices in housing, shopping, communities, and transportation is a key aim of smart growth.

• Strengthen and Direct Development Towards Existing Communities
  Smart growth directs development towards existing communities already served by infrastructure, seeking to utilize the resources that existing neighborhoods offer, and conserve open space and irreplaceable natural resources on the urban fringe.

• Take Advantage of Compact Building Design
  Smart growth provides a means for communities to incorporate more compact building design as an alternative to conventional, land consumptive development.