Visit the Are We There Yet? home The “old stereotypes” ... are the “incomplete communities,” the single family homes in single-use residential neighborhoods that became defined after WWII as the American Dream. They are connected by wide roads and freeways, and were built farther and farther out from downtowns. These are the neighborhoods that were promoted first by the loan guarantees provided by the G.I. Bill, and supported by the mortgage tax deduction, the lending policies of private banks and a massive road-building program, which together with other factors prompted an exodus from cities to the suburbs. As Buzz Bissinger writes in the 1998 book A Prayer for the City: “The FHA, founded in 1934, was intended to help revive the nation’s dormant housing industry during the New Deal. But the ultimate influence of the FHA and its housing cousin, the Veterans Administration, went far beyond that, making the…

Smart Growth & Economic Success The EPA's Smart Growth Program has released a new report, Smart Growth and Economic Success, on the economic advantages of smart growth development. As this report shows, smart growth development -- compact, walkable, and diverse -- is attractive to developers, investors, local governments, and communities because it offers new opportunities for economic growth that is also environmentally sustainable: Compact: Using land and resources more efficiently and redeveloping old or neglected areas while retaining existing infrastructure can create economic advantages for real estate developers and investors, businesses, and local governments. Compact development can generate more revenue per acre because it uses land more efficiently. It can reduce the costs of land and infrastructure for individual projects and the costs of providing fire and police protection, utilities,…

The 12th annual New Partners for Smart Growth Conference will be held Feb. 7-9, 2013, in Kansas City, MO. Reconnecting America is an official cosponsor.

Four scholarly articles have been added to the Research Center best practices database covering a range of topics.

A 2003 working paper from Robert Cervero and Michael Duncan of University of California, Berkeley, has been added to the Research Center best practices. "Walking, Bicycling, and Urban Landscapes: Evidence from the San Francisco Bay Area" examines the question of what impact the built environment has on non-motorized travel (NMT) behavior.

The annual Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) is the leading venue for New Urbanist education, collaboration, and networking. CNU members come from around the world to discuss development practices and public policies, learn from recent innovative work, and advance new initiatives to transform our communities.

A 2005 report "Some Facts To Counter The Myths About Higher Density," authored by the Urban Land Institute along with the National Multi Housing Council, Sierra Club and the American Institute of Architects, has been added to the Resource Center best practices database.

The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) has this new resource guide on Healthy & Livable Communities. It’s a good compendium of links, research studies, case studies, etc.