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 down to), tomorrow I’ll focus on what it means as the connection to job growth is eventually made.

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