The term “smart growth” tends to be tossed around in politically loaded arguments relating to land use and transportation issues.  Most often the term is used to refer to some manner of development that is the opposite of what is being done or proposed.  Arguments about how a subdivision shouldn’t be plopped in an existing neighborhood; instead the land should be used in accordance with smart growth principles.  Charges that a large wooded tract at the edge of an urban area isn’t a suitable site for a new shopping center, but that smart growth would allow retail development in a struggling downtown area.  While these arguments are most certainly valid, it can be a struggle to see how smart growth is intended to work and what its guiding principles are.  (More after the jump)

I found two resources particularly helpful in being able to conceptualize smart growth, This Is Smart Growth and Why Smart Growth:  A Primer.   Why Smart Growth explains smart growth as a concept from the very beginning and provides examples of how communities struggling with various political difficulties, land use constraints, and economic limitations have utilized the principles of smart growth to overcome their problems.  This Is Smart Growth is almost an executive summary on smart growth and would be a great resource for talking points about smart growth.  This Is Smart Growth also provides a wider array of examples where smart growth principles have been successfully implemented.  Both publications are available for free and both are geared toward the average citizen looking to pick up some knowledge about how their community can be better developed.

One of the concepts that both publications point out is that smart growth is not a means of fueling NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) or BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything) mentalities.  Smart growth is rooted in the philosophy that development must and will occur.  Smart growth simply allows communities to inject their vision for the future into development projects.  Smart growth works to create a system where it is more desirable to develop within the framework of existing infrastructure rather than continuing to push development out in a sprawling pattern across ecologically valuable land.

While This Is Smart Growth and Why Smart Growth both advocate for regional scale comprehensive plans, much of the information is very pertinent and useful for an engaged citizen at the neighborhood and community levels.  Some controls such as Urban Growth Boundaries can really only be addressed properly at a regional scale, but other components of smart growth can start at a neighborhood or community level.  In fact neighborhoods that take the initiative to develop small area plans and the time to define a coherent community vision will stand a much stronger chance at leveraging principles of smart growth into proposed developments.

Both of these publications are informative and present the information without an anti-development bias.  The reader is able to gain a solid understanding of smart growth and is enabled with resources that show how smart growth has operated in other areas.  Most importantly these publications illuminate the concepts of smart growth and remove many of the ideas that are often NIBMYisms costumed as smart growth.