Module SP4: Smart Growth Planning for Rural and Urban Communities
This module provides an introduction to Smart Growth, an overview of land use trends and development patterns in Michigan, and Design Techniques to start your community on the road to smart growth. Register online now!
Throughout the U.S. and Michigan, the term Smart Growth is being used and adopted by groups and organizations that are trying to change the negative consequences of suburban sprawl. However, the term can be confusing to the public when each organization is defining the term differently in pursuit of its own agenda.
Smart growth is development that serves the economy, community, and the environment. It provides a framework for communities to make informed decisions about how and where they grow. Smart growth makes it possible for communities to grow in ways that support economic development and jobs; create strong neighborhoods with a range of housing, commercial, and transportation options; and achieve healthy communities that provide families with a clean environment.
With Smart Growth, development and the benefit it brings to individual property owners and citizens are not stopped, but policies that contribute to sprawl are not encouraged. Smart Growth provides a solution to the concerns facing many communities about highly dispersed development patterns and how and where to grow. Smart growth techniques, more than any previous efforts to provide an organizing set of principles for building quality communities, offer many opportunities for win-win results.
There are four units in this series.
- What is Smart Growth
- Land Use Trends and the Role of Planning
- Design Techniques for Rural Communities
- Design Techniques for Urban Communities
