What does Smart Growth have to do with job growth?
A lot! Unfortunately, you wouldn’t know it by reading the mainstream press. Hopefully by the end of this blog’s week you’ll have a resource to point to. But first, we need to define Smart Growth. There’s the Smart Growth Network’s definition, representing a consortium of the most influential public and private sector organizations that can influence Smart Growth. However, because they are sponsored by a federal body (EPA), they can’t advocate for specific policy changes. Then there’s the policy-oriented coalition Smart Growth America’s (SGA) definition. SGA focuses on sweeping changes to federal and state government policy, but not specifically focused on the municipal level. The nonprofit urban design-oriented group, The Congress for the New Urbanism’s (CNU) definition is by far the most specific. They even have a name for their definition: The Charter for the New Urbanism. Seeing as this was written with municipality by municipality implementation in mind (this is what it all comes d
