Q: How does affordable housing relate to Smart Growth?

In the discussion of Smart Growth as an alternative to urban sprawl, one key aspect often overlooked is the currently prevailing system of community development codes and standards that by design, whether intentionally or not, have promoted subdivisions and strip malls. To change these community settlement patterns to allow for land conservation and to promote traditional patterns of hamlet, village, town and city, new codes are necessary. The most comprehensive example of a code designed for this purpose is the SmartCode. SmartCode zoning categories may ensure that a community offers a full diversity of housing types, building types, thoroughfare types, and civic space types, and that each has appropriate characteristics for its location.

Q: What is Smart Growth?

Smart Growth is a national movement consisting of the application of a series of principles to planning and public space administration strategies in support of development that is environmentally sensitive, economically viable, community-oriented, and sustainable. Its origins are as an anti-sprawl movement in the 1970s.

Although every area must define what Smart Growth means to them at the local and regional levels, most proponents agree on 10 core principles:

1. Mix land uses
2. Take advantage of compact building design
3. Create a range of housing opportunities and choices
4. Create walk-able neighborhoods
5. Foster distinctive, attractive communities with a strong sense of place
6. Preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty, and critical environmental areas
7. Strengthen and direct development towards existing communities
8. Provide a variety of transportation choices
9. Make development decisions predictable, fair, and cost effective
10. Encourage community and stakeholder collaboration in development decisions

Q: What have planners in other areas of the country done to ensure a diversity of housing types?

• Miami, FL
• Taos, NM
• Petaluma, CA
• Post Falls, ID
• Leander, TX

Q: What planning tools are most often cited by developers as an incentive to build affordable housing?

Affordable Housing in New Urbanist Communities: A Survey of Developers by Jennifer Steffel Johnson, University of Colorado at Denver  & Emily Talen, Arizona State University