What is Smart Growth? 

 

• people-centered rather than car-centered
• infill rather than sprawl
• new development and redevelopment where there is existing infrastructure. 
• compact, walk-able and bike-able streets
• mixed-use development 
• a wide range of housing choices
• conservation of valuable natural resources--efficient use of land and water
• a greater sense of community
• improved availability of transit--small electric bus service

Instead of the monochromatic new suburban houses, smart growth developments offer a range of housing choices. Instead of development that requires residents to drive long distances between jobs, homes, shopping and recreation, smart growth places workplaces, homes, and services closer together to allow children and adults to walk, bike or use public transit to reach their daily destinations.

 

What’s the problem with Sprawl?

 

Automobile dependent

Low density--eating up more and more land. 

Consumes significant amounts of natural resources

 

Sprawl eats up open land and eats up money.

 

The American Farmland Trust reports that between 1982 and 2007, the U.S. population grew by 30% percent. During the same time period, developed land increased 57%. In Pennsylvania, between 1992 and 2005, the population grew by 4.5% and developed land increased by 131.4% (1.2 million acres to almost 2.5 million acres).

 

Economic impacts: 

• increased travel costs; 
• decreased economic vitality of urban centers;
• loss of productive farm and timberland; loss of natural lands that support tourism and wildlife related industries;
• increased tax burdens due to more expensive road, utility and school construction and maintenance costs; 
• increased car use leading to higher air pollution and increased health care costs for diseases like asthma.

 

Other problems with sprawl

• Sprawl creates large amounts of impervious surfaces, such as roads, parking lots and residential lawns over which rainwater flows and picks up pollutants; 
• The capacity to recharge water supplies is diminished both by the decrease in pervious surfaces 
• increased impervious surfaces include increased water treatment costs, streams and waterways impacted by increased pollutants,
• increased chances for and intensities of floods.

Environmental Impact

 

The rapid consumption of land in the nation’s fastest-growing large metropolitan areas could threaten the survival of nearly one out of every three imperiled species, according to the first study ever to quantify the impact of sprawling development on wildlife nationally. In at least three dozen rapidly-growing counties found mostly in the South and West, open space on non-federal lands is being lost so quickly that essential wildlife habitat will be mostly gone within the next two decades, unless development patterns are altered.

 

If people really want change in Chico, they need to become informed and insist that Chico developers, architects, and staff and elected officials become informed. 

 

Strongtowns.org

Smartgrowthamerica.org

Cnu.org (Congress for the New Urbanism