10.1177/0885412204271668
ARTICLE
What
Is “Smart Growth?”
Journal of Planning Literature
What Is “Smart Growth?”—Really?
Lin Ye
Sumedha Mandpe
Peter B. Meyer
A “smart growth” agenda has been adopted by many different
organizations. The label thus may have lost any clear-cut
meaning due to the divergent perceptions and agendas of
organizations using the term. Some appear to have adopted it
as a form of political cover, whether for antigrowth or
antiregulation positions. In other cases, the principles seem to
be reformulated in response to the realities of local planning.
This article first reviews smart growth statements from ten
national organizations with divergent land use agendas.
Despite their differing agendas, their broad conceptual definitions are found to converge. Turning to implementation
efforts, the article then reviews forty-nine documents from
two states: Georgia and Kentucky. The documents exhibit
extreme variety in the meanings ascribed to smart growth.
Moreover, few of the plans and policies incorporate multiple
interventions, which is a key dimension of the smart growth
approach as described by the national groups.
Keywords: smart growth; sprawl; state policy; local planning
The term smart growth has been a part of the U. S. plan-
ning lexicon for about a decade, and an ever-widening
range of organizations have come forward to endorse
smart growth principles. As the term gains acceptance,
however, it seems to lose specificity or, indeed, meaningful content. An array of very different policies, not
all of which are necessarily compatible, have been introduced under the label smart growth as responses to
urban problems (e.g., American Planning Association
2002b, 2002c; Porter 2002; Trust for Public Land 1999;
U.S. Department of Agriculture 2001; U.S. Department
of Housing and Urban Development [HUD] 2003).
While it may be argued that any efforts to promote
socially and environmentally intelligent growth warrant encouragement from planners, these proposed
policies need careful examination. Broad envelope definitions do not help to systematically examine or label
new policies and practices: “In many areas, redirecting
LIN YE is currently a PhD candidate in the School of Urban and
Public Affairs at the University of Louisville. He received his master’s degree in public administration from the University of Louisville and his bachelor’s degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University
in China. His research interests include urban development and
planning, urban sprawl and smart growth, and comparative urban
development.
SUMEDHA MANDPE is currently working at Creative Alliance, a
public relations agency, and pursuing a master’s degree in urban
planning at the University of Louisville. She earned her master’s
degree in business administration (marketing) from India. Her
research interests include the use of marketing and communications
as a platform to help communities understand and deal with critical
issues of urban development, economic development, and land use
pattern changes.
PETER B. MEYER is a professor of urban policy and economics at
the University of Louisville, where he serves as director of the Center
for Environmental Policy and Management and its U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-funded Environmental Finance
Center. With a background in local economic development, he has
conducted studies through these centers and his own firm on a variety of brownfield and other contaminated land policy, risk management, environmental insurance, and finance issues for EPA, the
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Economic Development Administration during the past decade. He also
has worked on urban revitalization efforts with a number of different
EPA Brownfield Pilot Project recipients.
Journal of Planning Literature, Vol. 19, No. 3 (February 2005).
DOI: 10.1177/0885412204271668
Copyright © 2005 by Sage Publications
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Journal of Planning Literature
just 20 percent of the growth headed for areas outside
central cities and inner suburbs would double or triple
the growth projected for inner areas. . . . This is smart
growth, as opposed to sprawled growth” (Burchell,
Listokin, and Galley 2000, 822). Definitions are needed
that clarify the specific actions and programs to be
undertaken in order to achieve this type of redirection
of new settlement.
It is increasingly obvious that different environmental organizations, government agencies, and interest
groups define smart growth in their own ways to
achieve their particular missions and goals. Then end
result is the use of a common label for approaches that
are not fully consistent and may even be contradictory.
This article is a preliminary effort to parse the different
meanings of smart growth currently in circulation. We
do not claim to offer a fully comprehensive view of the
massive smart growth literature, especially given the
array of public policies that are now using the term as
their rationale or justification. Rather, we review a
selection of Web sites, publications, laws, and government program descriptions to assess the range of
approaches and activities now promulgated under the
smart growth label.
Our discussion proceeds as follows: First, we review
the writings of ten large national organizations that are
widely acknowledged to have an interest in smart
growth to see how they define the term in their literatures. Next, we synthesize across those definitions by
identifying six dimensions of smart growth approaches
through the commonalities exhibited. These smart
growth elements are further decomposed into their
major components or subemphases using the content of
forty-nine different smart growth policy documents
collected for the purpose of comparison. We then use
those taxonomies to compare policies and programs in
Georgia and Kentucky, two southeastern U.S. states
with very limited planning efforts and capacities. Both
states are experiencing substantial sprawl but growing
in population at very different rates. The comparisons
form the basis for a preliminary discussion of the limitations of the term smart growth that arise from the
absence of clarity and consistency in its usage. The limitations are especially critical in light of reliance on this
ill-defined concept as the basis for framing planning
approaches that address the tensions and planning
potential inherent in simultaneously pursuing economic growth and environmental preservation. We
conclude with a note on the need for additional effort to
address analysis problems posed by the malleability of
the term smart growth.
NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS’ DEFINITIONS
Pursuing usable definitions for the term smart
growth, we turned to three federal agencies, five
nonprofits claiming at least a partial mission in directing the processes of economic expansion and land use
change, and two national associations dominated by
for-profit developers and builders. While the definitions promulgated by these organizations differ in tone
and specificity, they share a set of broad commonalities,
as Table 1 illustrates.
The federal government’s environmental arm, the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has
defined smart growth as “development that serves the
economy, the community, and the environment. It
changes the terms of the development debate away
from the traditional growth/no growth question to
‘how and where should new development be accommodated’” (EPA n.d.b). The EPA promulgated national
awards for smart growth achievement in 2002. The
announcement for the awards provided a list of the features of eligible projects, thus offering a more detailed
definition of the term. The projects were defined as
combining a mix of land uses, compact building design,
and diverse housing opportunities in compact,
walkable communities with a variety of transportation
options, and a reliance on participatory planning and
predictable decision processes to preserve and
strengthen existing settlements and promote a strong
sense of place (EPA 2002).
The agency appeared to recognize that efforts to protect the environment needed to accommodate the
development pressures associated with growth in both
population and economic activity. Smart growth in the
EPA lexicon thus involves finding ways to encourage
economic growth that preserve valuable natural
resources and environments.
The nation’s leading urban development agency,
HUD, declares that one of the goals of its community
renewal program is to help communities across America grow in ways that ensure a high quality of life and
strong, sustainable economic growth through the use of
regional smart growth strategies (HUD 2003). We were
unable to find a definition of smart growth in either the
HUD site Index1 or in its Glossary.2 We uncovered one
HUD-authorized publication, however, that did offer a
definition—Smart Growth and Housing Policy (Nelson
and Wachter 2002). While they looked at only one facet
of the issue, the authors contend that, when it comes to
housing, smart growth appeared to focus on increasing
housing options, integrating diverse land uses with
housing, and elevating design as a consideration. They
What Is “Smart Growth?”
TABLE 1.
303
Definitions and Principles of Smart Growth
U.S. Environmental Protection Agencya
Healthy communities—that provide families with a clean environment. Smart growth balances development and environmental protection—accommodating growth while preserving open space and critical habitat, reusing land, and protecting water supplies and air quality
Economic development and jobs—that create business opportunities and improve local tax base, that provide neighborhood services and amenities, and that create economically competitive communities
Strong neighborhoods—that provide a range of housing options giving people the opportunity to choose housing that
best suits them. They maintain and enhance the value of existing neighborhoods and create a sense of community
Transportation choices—that give people the option to walk, ride a bike, take transit, or drive
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Developmentb
Increasing housing options—change the stereotypical traditional single-family residential housing types and expand
housing options such as multifamily, multi-unit housing
Integrating land uses with housing— integrate land uses to recreate urban and suburban neighborhoods that integrate
residential, commercial, and recreational functions, thus reducing the heavy dependence on automobiles
Elevating design—vertical elevating design is a key to make urban areas more compact, more mixed, and denser. Design
involves more than physical appearances; it includes designing infrastructure, and recreation, and transportation systems, and more broadly, land use systems to create attractive areas to be that create a sense of place
U.S. Department of Agriculturec
Locating new development in center cities and older suburbs rather in fringe areas
Supporting mass transit and pedestrian-friendly development
Encouraging mixed-use development (e.g., housing, retail, industrial)
Preserving farmland, open space, and environmental resources
American Planning Associationd
Have a unique sense of community and place
Preserve and enhance valuable natural and cultural resources
Equitably distribute the costs and benefits of development
Expand the range of transportation, employment, and housing choices in a fiscally responsible manner
Value long-range, regional considerations of sustainability over short-term incremental geographically isolated actions
Promote public health and healthy communities
Smart Growth Networke
Create a range of housing opportunities and choice
Create walkable neighborhoods
Encourage community and stakeholder collaboration
Foster distinctive, attractive places with a strong sense of place
Mix land uses
Preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty, and critical environmental areas
Provide a variety of transportation choices
Strengthen and direct development toward existing communities
Take advantage of compact building design
Smart Growth Americaf
Neighborhood livability—neighborhoods should be safe, convenient, attractive, and affordable
Better access, less traffic—emphasizing on mixing land uses; clustering development; and providing multiple transportation choices to manage congestion, to pollute less, and to save energy
Thriving cities, suburbs, and towns—guiding development to already built-up areas to save investments in transportation, schools, libraries, and other public services and to preserve attractive buildings, historic districts, and culture
landmarks
Shared benefits—eliminating divisions by income and race and enabling all residents to be beneficiaries of prosperity
Lower costs and lower taxes—taking advantage of existing infrastructure, relying less on driving, and saving investment
for other things
Keeping open space
Sierra Clubg
Livable communities, designed for people rather than for automobiles
Closeness to nature and permanent conservation of important lands
Viable public transit at the city and metropolitan area scale is needed to support compact forms of development
Revitalization of older suburbs and downtowns, and rundown commercial areas
Urban growth boundaries
Long-term visions for communities and regions
(continued)
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TABLE 1 (continued)
Trust of Public Landh
Conserve lands to protect for recreation, community character, conservation of natural resources, and open space
Make existing communities attractive and livable enough to steer growth away from the countryside
Identify clearly both “desired development zones” and lands it wants to protect
Ensure that existing neighborhoods, including those with lower-income housing, will have full access to the system of
parks and greenways
National Association of Home Buildersi
Meeting the nation’s housing needs—plan for the anticipated growth in economy activity, population, and housing
demand, as well as ongoing changes in demographics and life styles
Providing a wide range of housing choices—plan for growth that allows for a wide range of housing types to suit the
needs and income levels of a community’s diverse population
A comprehensive process for planning growth—identify land to be made available for residential, commercial, recreational, and industrial uses and meaningful open space
Planning and funding infrastructure improvements—encourage local communities to adopt balanced and reliable means
to finance and pay for the construction and expansion of public facilities and infrastructures
Using land more efficiently—support higher density development and innovative land use policies to encourage mixeduse and pedestrian-friendly development
Revitalizing older suburban and inner-city markets
Urban Land Institute j
Development is economically viable and preserves open space and natural resources
Land use planning is comprehensive, integrated, and regional
Public, private, and nonprofit sectors collaborate on growth and development issues to achieve mutually beneficial
outcomes
Certainty and predictability are inherent to the development process
Infrastructure is maintained and enhanced to serve existing and new residents
Redevelopment of infill housing, brownfield sites, and obsolete buildings is actively pursued
Urban centers and neighborhoods are integral components of a healthy regional economy
Compact suburban development is integrated into existing commercial areas, new town centers, and/or near existing or
planned transportation facilities
Development on the urban fringe integrates a mix of land uses, preserves open space, is fiscally responsible, and provides
transportation options
SOURCES:
a. U.S. Environment Protection Agency (n.d.b).
b. Nelson and Wachter (2002).
c. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service (2001).
d. American Planning Association (2002c).
e. Smart Growth Network (n.d.).
f. Smart Growth America (n.d.)
g. Parfrey (n.d.).
h. Horton (1999).
i. National Association of Home Builders (n.d.b.).
j. Urban Land Institute (n.d.).
found that as the percentage of American households
with children fell (from 42.1% in 1974 to 38.1% in 1995),
smart growth efforts played a role in generating housing options other than the stereotypical single-family
house. They also argued that smart growth forces need
to design infrastructure, recreation, and transportation
systems to promote urban areas that are more compact,
dense, and mixed in both land uses and household
income levels than the current norm (Nelson and
Wachter 2002).
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), by contrast, seems to have little concern for urban forms
except for their effect on rural settlements and land
uses. Thus, USDA does not provide a definitive discussion on the topic of smart growth on its Web site. The
USDA Economic Research Service provided a definition of smart growth in 2001, describing it as “a catch-all
phrase to describe a number of land use policies to
influence the pattern and density of new development . . . [directing] . . . development to designated areas
What Is “Smart Growth?”
(cities and older suburbs) through incentives and disincentives, without actually prohibiting development
outside them or threatening individual property
rights” (USDA 2001, 24). This definition appears to be
an effort to allay farmers’ fears of the possible impact of
smart growth policies and practices on their freedom of
action in using—or disposing of—their farmlands.
Moving beyond the federal government, we find
numerous national nonprofit organizations that have
developed their own specific definitions or principles
of smart growth. We begin a review of perspectives
with the definition offered by an umbrella organization,
the Smart Growth Network (SGN). SGN counts EPA
and most of the other agencies and organizations
described here in its membership, including some not
obviously wedded to limiting urban sprawl. Membership includes thirty-three partners, spanning university research centers, a state government, traditional
environmental organizations, developers’ associations,
and federal agencies. As such an inclusive coalition, the
organization needed to arrive at a universal or broadbased vision. The network’s Web site argues that, compared to traditional development, “new smart growth
is more town-centered, is transit and pedestrian oriented, and has a greater mix of housing, commercial
and retail uses” (International City/County Management Association with Geoff Anderson 1998, 1).
Smart Growth America (SGA) is a different nationwide coalition, consisting of nearly 100 smart growth
advocacy organizations committed to combating
expansion of urban land uses. It includes 1000 Friends
of Oregon, the American Farmland Trust, the Congress
for New Urbanism, the National Wildlife Federation,
and others (many of which are also members of SGN).
SGA defines smart growth according to its outcomes,
which they claim “mirror the basic values of most
Americans.” Their definition (see Table 1) identifies six
preferred outcomes, which combine desired characteristics of neighborhoods with economic expansion and
preservation of open space (SGA n.d.).
The American Planning Association (APA 2002b)
formally adopted a Smart Growth Policy Guide at the
2002 National Planning Conference in Chicago. Such
guides, following formal adoption by the organization’s national delegate assembly and ratification by its
Board of Directors, are intended to serve the needs of
the professionals who direct most public sector planning activity in the United States, in this case offering
them a definition of smart growth to guide their deliberations. In announcing the guide, the APA (2002c)
claimed that “smart growth requires a comprehensive
approach that cuts across many traditional public policy disciplines . . . [s]mart growth means using comprehensive planning to guide, design, develop, revitalize
305
and build communities . . . [and] compact, transit accessible, pedestrian-oriented, mixed use development
patterns and land reuse epitomize the application of the
principles of smart growth.”
The Sierra Club, with its more than 700,000 members, exemplifies environmental organizations’ concern for how human activity expansion affects the rest
of the world’s systems and species. It outlines several
elements that are most important for smart growth,
including communities designed for people rather than
for automobiles, closeness to nature and permanent
conservation of important lands, improved public transit, and revitalization of older suburbs and downtowns
(Parfrey n.d.).
The Trust for Public Land (TPL) is a national nonprofit organization working to protect land from development when possible and to preserve public access to
lands. TPL holds that growth must be accommodated
but that current patterns of sprawl development are
environmentally, fiscally, and socially ruinous. TPL
activists believe that the key to smart growth is convincing more people that living on less land can be “livable and not just crowded” (Horton 1999). The organization argues, “To truly grow smart a community must
decide what lands to protect for recreation, community
character, the conservation of natural resources, and
open space. This decision helps shape growth and
define where compact development should occur”
(TPL 1999, 8).
The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB
n.d.a) defines as a key element of its vision that “builders have the freedom to operate as entrepreneurs in an
open and competitive environment.” Therefore, it has
looked askance at smart growth strictures on land use
and development. Nevertheless, the organization felt
the obligation to promulgate a definition of smart
growth, which it describes as “building a political consensus (a) to support comprehensive local plans
employing market-sensitive and innovative land-use
planning concepts to achieve a wide range of housing
choices for all Americans, (b) to fairly and fully finance
infrastructure to support necessary new residential,
commercial, and industrial growth, and (c) to preserve
meaningful open space and protect the environment”
(NAHB 2003). In this case, smart growth has been
defined in a manner that does not proscribe any
particular building and development activities.
“The Urban Land Institute [ULI] defines smart
growth as development that is environmentally sensitive, economically viable, community-oriented, and
sustainable.” ULI (n.d.) offers a Web site3 with its view
on the subject to “offer guidance to help move smart
growth from rhetoric to reality and help communities
determine what type of growth best serves their inter-
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ests.” For an organization that continues to be led by
representatives of the property development community, this statement implies significant acceptance of
potential constraints on the freedom of property
owners to develop as they see fit.
Table 1 summarizes the definitions offered by these
different organizations with their divergent objectives
and concerns. For all their differences, these conceptualizations share at least some acceptance of the natural
resources preservation theme of smart growth. Healthy
environment, clean air, clean water, wildlife, green
space, open space, and farmland are the most common
phrases present in all the definitions or principles of the
smart growth concept. However, organizations’
approaches to the means of preserving important natural areas are rather different. We turn next to a comparison and an initial synthesis of these definitions.
CONSISTENCY AND CONFLICT IN
SMART GROWTH DEFINITIONS
SGN, SGA, and Sierra Club are concerned with permanently conserving open space and with discouraging the spatial expansion of development. As SGA
states, “Productive agricultural areas, wildlife habitats,
and key open space should also be permanently protected” (Parfrey n.d.). The EPA, ULI, and NAHB place
more emphasis on striking a balance between development and environmental protection. They admit that
development is likely to happen and see the more
important issue as trying to accommodate new development while preserving the natural resources. On
behalf of its homebuilder constituencies, NAHB is the
most aggressive among the agencies in supporting new
land development. It supports plans that identify land
to be made “available for residential, commercial, recreational and industrial uses as well as to be set aside as
meaningful open space,” providing “environmentallysensitive areas” are protected (NAHB n.d.b). The ULI
(n.d.) encourages compact suburban development that
can be “integrated into existing commercial areas, new
town centers, and/or near existing or planned transportation facilities.” There is thus clear conflict between
NAHB and ULI over the appropriate emphasis on new
development and natural resource preservation under
the mantle of smart growth. Both, however, recognize
that some mix of the two needs to be pursued.
Another widespread theme is a commitment to a
range of transportation choices. Except for TPL, all the
organizations reference the importance of more transportation options for people to get to work, recreate,
and live (including public transit, walking, and bicycling in most instances). They all affirm that reducing
individual automobile use is a valuable approach for
conserving energy, cleaning up polluted air, and
mitigating traffic congestion.
While the terms themselves remain ill-defined, the
definitions of smart growth also assert the importance
of developing a “sense of community” and promoting
“livability.” In many instances, this element is defined
in terms of preserving existing communities and
restraining development expansion into more remote
areas. There seems to be limited concern about the
effects on communities of adding new people to existing populations, whether that action involves only
increasing densities or includes increasing the diversity
of residents and, thus, of housing stock. Action recommendations include inviting community and stakeholder collaboration; providing for different incomelevel residents in communities; and encouraging neighborhood shops, restaurants, and other businesses to
locate near residential areas.
If the different groups more or less agree upon the
above three elements (the importance of resource preservation, transportation choices, and community) in
their definitions of smart growth, there is substantial
disagreement over three other clearly evident dimensions of the concept: housing, planning, and economic
development. These areas may be more central to the
different organizational missions and constituencies of
the organizations examined, which would explain
why—and perhaps how—their definitions differ.
As one might expect of organizations with a primary
focus on concern for public land use policy in their missions, USDA; TPL; and, to some degree, ULI all overlook housing policies in their definitions of smart
growth. NAHB, not surprisingly, stresses housing,
going so far as to define smart growth as a tool for promoting home ownership and new housing development. NAHB notes that “when setting aside meaningful open space, a local community should rezone other
land to assure there is an ample supply of land available
for residential development” (National Association of
Home Builders n.d.b). This is a position that many
would interpret as contradicting the broader smart
growth concerns with new housing as potentially
responsible for sprawl. While HUD shares the NAHB
concern for housing, the department is oriented more
toward compact development and provides urban
design technical assistance to support communities.
HUD appears to attempt to strike a balance between
environmental preservation and housing supply
growth. Even though housing provision is not part of
the EPA mission, the agency gives the impression that it
wants to include every dimension of smart growth in its
What Is “Smart Growth?”
307
definition in order to build a constituency for its
environmental agenda.
THE SIX MAJOR COMPONENTS
OF SMART GROWTH
Planning and economic development are the two
most complicated categories in the smart growth definition. The potential conflict between economic growth
and environmental protection is, after all, the issue that
the smart growth approach is intended to resolve. Different groups try to find the balance between growth
and conservation that best serves their constituencies.
Conflict avoidance is not possible without prior effort,
that is, without planning. Therefore, because it is a central concern, no group can define economic development as irrelevant, and because it is the policy tool of
choice, none can ignore planning. What differs across
the groups is how they propose to use the tool to
address the concern. Promoting mixed land use and
addressing possible negatives that undermine the
potential density of new development are the two
approaches shared by most groups.
In much the same way as we were able to find six
major components that make up the umbrella smart
growth term, we can move on to a decomposition of
those dimensions into their programmatic elements.
These elements show just how substantial the variation
really is between organizations, even when they share
an interest in housing, planning, or economic development policies. Table 2 summarizes some of the multiple
dimensions of the six major components of smart
growth derived from the national organizations’
varying definitions.
The elaborations on the major categories presented
in Table 2 are derived from our review of forty-nine policies and programs that are labeled as smart growth by
their promulgators. These materials were identified
through Web scanning using the term smart growth to
screen for and locate documents posted by state and
local government units in Georgia and Kentucky. Citing
multiple sources for each elaboration of a dimension in
the table or in the narrative discussion is too cumbersome and of minimal value for this examination of what
planning practice documents tell us about the real definition of smart growth. All the sources are, however,
identified in the appendix for further reference.
1. Planning for smart growth encompasses six broad
areas: comprehensive growth planning, mixed land use
zoning, design and planning for increased residential
density, design for street connectivity, innovation in
water infrastructure provision, and enhancement of
public service facilities, including recreational areas.
Comprehensive planning is deemed to be “smart” in
light of its utilization of existing infrastructure and its
potential contributions to reducing automobile use and
energy consumption; its inclusiveness and inherently
regional logic and character; and integrating housing,
economic development, and transportation elements. It
is thus a key element in promoting sufficiently mixed
land use, so that “residents provide a market and
employees for businesses, and, in turn, businesses provide desired amenities and employment opportunities
for residents” (Hirschhorn and Souza 2001, 18). The
social and economic interaction of residents and businesses in a neighborhood requires increasing density.
Density, in turn, promotes more open space and natural
land; offers economies of scale in public transit, schools,
and emergency services; and decreases automobile
dependency.
The design and construction of public infrastructure
is also part of the planning process for smart growth,
with street connectivity design to avoid dead ends, integrate new roads within the existing street network, and
The Sierra Club has the strongest statement on
growth management: “Urban growth boundaries are a
key solution to contain continuous sprawl development” (Parfrey n.d.). No other groups we examined
appear to rely on state-level growth management as
their central tool for planning development, due in part
to controversy over whether this much-studied
approach actually works. The antigrowth label
imposed by libertarian organizations on state growth
management programs, and on smart growth efforts
more generally, may have the effect of limiting the
endorsement by other groups of explicit control mechanisms (Bradley 2003; Fiscelli 2003; Hayward 2000).
The Sierra Club, ULI, and USDA share a common
focus, however, on the detailed economic development
tools that best implement the smart growth concept.
Part of their common rationale is that good comprehensive planning for both land use and economic development requires regional coordination among urban, suburban, and rural communities. While very concerned
with planning in the broadest sense, the APA Policy
Guide addresses five dimensions of “specific policy
motions” required to pursue smart growth but fails to
incorporate any of the essential details or elements of
the practical economic development tools required in
its discussion (APA 2002b).
On a conceptual plane, one could continue the examination of differences across the ten summary statements about smart growth in Table 1. It appears more
constructive, however, to examine implementation of
the six broad elements of the smart growth agenda: natural resource preservation, transportation, housing,
community development, and planning economic
development.
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TABLE 2.
Main Elements of Smart Growth Policies
Planning
Transportation
Economic Development
Comprehensive planning
Mixed land uses
Increased density
Street connectivity
Alternative/innovative water
infrastructure and systems
Public facilities planning
Pedestrianization
Facilities for bicycling
Public transit promotion
Systems integration and nodal networks
Neighborhood business
Downtown revitalization
Infill development
Using existing infrastructure
Housing
Community Development
Natural Resource Preservation
Multifamily housing
Smaller lots
Manufactured homes
Housing for special needs
and diverse households
Popular participation
Recognizing/promoting the unique
features of each community
Farmland preservation
Subdivision conservation
Easement conservation
Transferable development right
Purchase of development rights
Historical preservation
Ecological land preservation
minimize curb cuts, especially on arterials (National
Wildlife Federation n.d.). The logic is as follows: “Gated
communities, private road systems, and the introduction of disconnected cul-de-sac systems promote disconnections. Proper street connectivity, on the other
hand, reduces miles traveled, increases non-motorized
trips, and supports transit use” (APA 2002b, III-B-7).
Concerns over water infrastructure tend to initially
arise from waste water problems. Increasingly, however, these concerns include assuring source water
quality as well as wetlands protection, incorporating
the need to protect the natural function of stream and
wetland systems into all aspects of the planning process. Public service facility planning overall recognizes
that such installations can enhance the viability of existing communities and reduce outward migrations.
Efforts to avoid subsidies to new development through
facility provision include heightened need justification
standards for public financing of new facilities and
public-private cost sharing with developers.
2. “Transportation choice means providing residents
with multiple, safe and connected options—driving,
rail and bus transit, bicycling, walking—to get from one
place to the other” rather than being automobile
dependent (EPA n.d.a, emphasis added). Pursuing this
objective involves “better coordinating between land
use and transportation, increasing availability of high
quality transit service . . . [and] . . . ensuring connectivity
between pedestrian, bike, transit and road facilities”
(SGN 2002, 62). The common goal across all smart
growth efforts in this dimension is simply pursuit of
reduced reliance on cars and, therefore, fewer miles
traveled, lower road budgets, and less pollution.
3. Economic development, whether as a goal to be promoted or as a process to be managed, is arguably a central concern of planning efforts, smart or otherwise. In
the smart growth context, development promotion
efforts involve three threads: encouraging neighborhood business, infill development, and downtown
redevelopment. Encouraging neighborhood business
reflects, first, building communities in which people
can live, work, shop and recreate and, second, revitalizing depressed neighborhoods by encouraging new economic activity, thus supporting continued use of available infrastructure. Infill development involves using
vacant and abandoned spaces, both for housing and
new nonlocal businesses, in order to avoid urban area
spatial expansion while promoting economic growth.
Downtown redevelopment policies involve efforts to
change the status of city centers as destinations and
development targets by promoting more housing
(often purposefully mixed income), employment, and
public amenities as attractions for residents and
recreational activities.
4. Housing policies generally encompass offering
more options in order to provide households of all
income levels with the ability to live in a home that
meets their needs. Smart growth housing policies tend
to promote alternatives to the postwar standards of the
stand-alone single family home in income-segregated
areas. The smart growth housing orientation is
intended to create “opportunities for communities to
What Is “Smart Growth?”
slowly increase density without radically changing the
landscape” (SGN 2002, 18).
5. Community development as a concern represents an
acknowledgment that people remaining in place create
locally specific sociocultural values that need to be protected and enhanced in the face of change. Different
communities have their own cultural, historical, and
economic values. This uniqueness can be supported by
efforts to build consensus in each community about
how it wants to pursue smart growth. Policies under
this category emphasize the specific community characteristics and historical values that will help maintain
existing communities and the need for community participation in local planning efforts. The approaches tend
to stress identifying diverse resources that different
community groups possess and setting up a platform
through which a range of organizations can participate
in policy making and implementation.
6. Natural resource preservation may be at the heart of
smart growth from a purely environmental perspective, with the resources in question covering animal
habitat, farms, ranch land, wetlands, and other places
of “natural beauty” and “critical environmental value.”
Major tools that are being widely used include strict
land use and preservation regulations and “the use of
market-based mechanisms such as donated conservation easements, transfer of development rights (TDR),
and purchase of development rights (PDR)” (SGN 2002,
44-45).
In essence, the smart growth definitions we have
examined incorporate some or all of these six dimensions into an integrated policy or program. The real
value of the concept of smart growth—if the term has
any remaining utility—thus lies in the extent to which
the policies, programs, and plans that are promulgated
under that label manage to incorporate the conceptual
depth of the definition in any practical sense, whatever
the mix of emphases across the six major dimensions
they may reflect.
DIFFERENCES ACROSS STATES—A COMPARISON
OF GEORGIA AND KENTUCKY
As we have noted, identifying the components of the
six dimensions in Table 2 involved the examination of
forty-nine state, regional (multicounty), and local policies and programs in the states of Georgia and Kentucky that identified smart growth as at least part of the
rationale. The two states both exhibit extensive rural
and natural areas, as well as a majority of local jurisdictions with no formal planning or zoning requirements.
However, they experienced very different levels of population and economic activity growth in the 1990s.
Georgia and Kentucky, therefore, reflect some of the
309
diversity that exists in the United States as a whole, with
respect to both growth pressures and response
capacities.
Admittedly, the states are not representative of the
nation in total population in 2000, with Georgia ranked
as the tenth largest state and Kentucky fourteenth, and
both less urbanized than the fifty-state average. However, both states began the decade of the nineties with
higher population densities than the nation as a whole,
which might suggest more sensitivity to consuming
undeveloped lands. More important, from the perspective of examining comparable political jurisdictions
and population data, the two states provide a good
basis for comparison since their counties are of similar
geographic size and they share a common history of a
laissez-faire attitude toward land use regulation
(Nelson 1999).
Table 3 highlights some comparisons of the states to
the United States and each other, in terms of recent status and changes. The comparison highlights differences
in tendencies toward “sprawl” and thus potential political motivation for policies claiming to offer smarter
growth. Georgia’s population grew at double the
national average, while Kentucky’s lagged, which
might lead us to expect little sprawl pressure in Kentucky. Both states also experienced higher income
growth than the United States overall. Income growth
has been associated with sprawl pressures since land
consumption rises with income. The extent of growth of
developed land area, however, may be the most telling
difference between the two states: Georgia’s five-year
(1992-97) growth in developed land area (27.4 percent)
was roughly comparable to its ten-year (1990-2000)
population change (26.4 percent). But during the same
two periods, Kentucky’s developed land grew by 15.8
percent, over 150% of its population expansion of 9.6%.
Kentucky residents actually spread out across more
land per capita in the 1990s than did the residents of,
and immigrants to, Georgia. However, Georgia
attracted far more political attention about whether the
state has reached a point at which the costs of growth
have outweighed the gain (Bouvier and Stein 2002).
That sort of publicity, and the recent SGA finding that
ranked the Atlanta metropolitan statistical area (MSA)
as the fourth most sprawling MSA in the nation (Ewing,
Pendall, and Chen 2002), can generate a need to claim
that a state is promulgating smart growth policies.
To determine what appears to have constituted
smart growth implementation in these two states, each
program or policy document was reviewed first for the
extent to which it addressed the six different dimensions of smart growth identified in Table 2. Next, those
programs or policies that involved some explicit land
use planning effort, a key element of smart growth,
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Journal of Planning Literature
TABLE 3.
Population, Income, and Land Use Change in Georgia and Kentuckya
United States
Total population 2000
Change, 1990-2000 (%)
Population density 2000 (per square mile)
Change, 1990-2000 (%)
Number of counties (or equivalents) in 2002
Median household income, 1999 ($)
Change, 1989-1999 (%)
Developed land area 1997 (1,000 acres)c
Change, 1992-1997 (%)c
281,421,906
13.2
79.6
14.4
3,136b
41,994
39.7
98,251.7
(6.6%)
12.9
Georgia
8,186,453
26.1
141.4
26.4
159
42,433
46.2
3,957.3
(11.4%)
27.4
Kentucky
4,041,769
9.7
101.7
9.6
120
33,672
49.4
1,737.5
(7.2%)
15.8
a. Unless otherwise stated, data are from U.S. census summary file 1 (SF1), 1990 and 2000.
b. Calculated from 2002 census of government—General purpose governments.
c. “Developed land area” includes nonfederal urban and built-up areas and rural transportation land. Numbers in parentheses
are percentages of nonfederal land that was developed. Data are from the 2001 Natural Resources Inventory (NRI), U.S. Department of Agriculture, at http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/technical/land/tables/t5846.html.
were examined further to determine the extent to which
public intervention in private land use decisions really
was accepted in practice, regardless of the rhetorical
posture of the document.
In both steps of the review process, the actual
breadth of the approach was established for each policy
or plan by counting how many of the possibilities were
encompassed by the document. Thus, the score on
smart growth for any one document ranged from one to
six, the number of dimensions and cells in Table 2. The
score for breadth of “planning”” covers the same range,
reflecting the six elements in the planning cell of the
table.
Table 4 displays the findings from these readings for
the forty-nine documents reviewed. Kentucky and
Georgia certainly have not come close to adopting any
statewide growth management (or smart growth) policies. Georgia has even been characterized as one of the
laissez-faire states that lack any statewide growth management mandates (Nelson 1999).Thus, some of their
state-level initiatives or programs are selected to help
reveal the current statewide efforts to promote smart
growth concept. It does appear, however, that some
dimensions of the smart growth logic have enough
appeal to permit implementation of some of the elements of the overall approach. Moreover, with some
such activity in evidence in forty-five of the documents,
the implementation clearly involves planning.
Looking more carefully at smart growth overall, it is
clear that, at the state level, few of the programs or policies promulgated spanned all six of the dimensions of
smart growth policies. By and large, however, those initiatives were clearly multidimensional, showing a
mean coverage of close to four different dimensions in
both Kentucky and Georgia. At the regional and local
levels, the Kentucky documents tended to incorporate
all six dimensions. Those from Georgia, in contrast,
appeared to be narrower in scope than their state policy
statements and plans, covering only slightly more than
half the dimensions on average. While these smart
growth documents generally included discussion of
planning, as we have noted, they clearly have not integrated the diverse elements of planning controls in any
consistent manner: no group of documents from either
state encompasses an average of even half of the six
planning components identified in Table 2.
The evidence on breadth of coverage of the smart
growth dimensions suggests that the term may be
included in policy statements as lip service or as a form
of political cover for programs that have little to do with
the key environmental concerns of the smart growth
advocates. To better understand what the policies really
encompass, it is necessary to go beyond coverage
counts to an examination of which smart growth and
planning elements actually appeared in the different
documents.
Table 5 examines coverage of the six dimensions of
smart growth in the broader state and strictly local documents. We lay no claim to a “finding” on the types of
coverage that are typical or characteristic, and we cannot explain the variation we observed in our limited
generalizations. These are subjects for further investigations. (There were only five regional programs across
two states in the document collection. Therefore, it was
impossible to generalize about those examples and we
have not included them in this discussion.)
What Is “Smart Growth?”
TABLE 4.
311
Comprehensiveness of Smart Growth Policies at Different Levels
Number of Smart
Growth Elements
Encompassed in Policy
Number of
Planning Elements
Encompassed in Policy
State
Mean
Number
of Policies
Mean
Number
of Policies
State
Georgia
Kentucky
Both
3.8
3.9
3.8
6
7
13
2.4
2.4
2.3
5
5
10
Regional
Georgia
Kentucky
Both
3.3
6.0
4.4
3
2
5
2.3
2.0
2.2
3
2
5
Local
Georgia
Kentucky
Both
3.6
5.1
4.4
15
16
31
2.5
2.6
2.6
15
15
30
State of Substate Government Level
TABLE 5.
Coverage of the Dimensions of Smart Growth Policies
(Percentage of Policies in
Both States That Encompass
the Particular Element)
Number of Policies
That Encompass the
Particular Element
Georgia
Kentucky
State level
(Total number of policies:
Georgia = 6, Kentucky = 7)
Planning (77%)
Transportation (38%)
Economic development (62%)
Housing (46%)
Community development (69%)
Natural resource preservation (92%)
5
3
4
1
5
5
5
2
4
5
4
7
Local level
(Total number of policies:
Georgia = 15, Kentucky = 16)
Planning (94%)
Transportation (61%)
Economic development (74%)
Housing (61%)
Community development (71%)
Natural resource preservation (74%)
15
6
8
6
9
10
14
13
15
13
13
13
Table 5 offers some useful insights and contrasts that
underscore inconsistency in usage and the need for further examination. At the state level, it appears that:
• Natural resource preservation is consistently a policy
focus. This uniformity suggests that, whatever else may
motivate the policies, there is a recognition that a majority of citizen groups and political constituencies
demand some environmental protection.
• Planning efforts are acknowledged as smart growth
policy imperatives in the vast majority of cases, with the
local documents in Georgia showing 100 percent commitment, probably due to legal requirements (APA
2002a, 51-52). Even absent such a requirement, however, fourteen out of sixteen of Kentucky’s local smart
growth documents stressed planning, suggesting that
there is a political imperative to imply some sort of
action, not just intent, in smart growth policy
documents.
• As noted in both Tables 4 and 5, Georgia’s state-level
policies seem to encompass more smart growth dimensions than do Kentucky’s, which are heavily concentrated on housing, an element that the Georgia documents tend to ignore. The need to provide for housing
may just be too obvious to mention in a state with massive population in-migration.
At the local level, however, Kentucky appears to be
uniformly more inclusive of the dimensions of smart
growth than is Georgia, with a mean coverage score of
312
Journal of Planning Literature
5.1 relative to Georgia’s 3.6, as noted in Table 4. One
could speculate extensively on the reason for this difference, on the nature of political pressures leading different parties to wrap themselves in the mantle of the smart
growth label, and on other issues. Kentucky appears to
offer an example of the power of poorly defined, but
popular, language as political cover for whatever the
real objectives of the policies actually may be. From a
different perspective, the Kentucky local documents’
broader coverage of all categories of smart growth policies, except for planning, when compared to Georgia
may be interpreted as reflecting a different political
imperative: the need to ensure that smart growth programs not be labeled as planning.
We have no strong empirical grounds for either interpretation, having no data on the political discourse
leading to the promulgation of the plans and policies,
nor the identities or economic motivations of the proponents and opponents of the decisions reflected in the
documents examined. The questions raised by such
speculation do, however, need to be addressed. It is
very clear from these superficial comparisons that the
language used cannot be taken to accurately reflect the
true motivations and objectives of the parties adopting
and adapting terms to serve their purposes.
This examination of the six dimensions of smart
growth policies suggests manipulation of language. A
closer look at the extent to which implementation plans
actually use all the tools available (and potentially necessary) provides somewhat more evidence, albeit no
definitive answers. Table 6 depicts the breadth of the
planning tools and approaches exhibited by the state
and local policy documents that were reviewed.
Once again, there are stark differences between the
states and the levels of government within them. The
variation in this case arises with the descriptions in the
policy documents of what constitutes “smart growth
planning.” At the state level, there is no comprehensive
planning evident in Kentucky, but Georgia, with legislative mandates in place (see APA 2002a, 51-52),
appears to rely heavily on the tool. Despite this very
fundamental difference, neither state pays any attention to street connectivity. This apparently is seen as a
local concern, even though all communities have state
roads and highway intersections over which the states
have jurisdiction. Both states emphasize planning for
public services provision. Beyond that, the states differ.
Why Kentucky places more emphasis on planning
for mixed land uses, while Georgia is more concerned
about increasing densities is not at all obvious. One
might speculate that it is because Georgia has experienced much higher in-migration. The fact that a concern for density is exhibited at a rate less than half that
for mixed land uses again suggests the use of symbolic
language as a cover.
It is interesting that this apparent inconsistency
arises less in the local-level policy documents. At this
level, the density issue appears in roughly two-thirds of
the statements that reference mixed land uses. The uniformly higher concern with both these issues at the local
level in Georgia than in Kentucky necessitates further
examination and explanation. Differences in rates of
urban expansion during the past decade are probably
only a starting point for analysis. More in-depth examination of the political pressures and processes leading
to adoption of the plans is clearly needed to explain the
greater interest evidenced in Kentucky documents for
comprehensive planning, street connectivity, and public services provision when compared to the Georgia
materials.
The few references to innovative water infrastructure appear to come from the smaller municipalities in
both states. New federal requirements (under clean
water and drinking water statutes) that water system
operators demonstrate their financial and managerial
capacities, not just their engineering/technical abilities
to provide water, may be raising some concerns in those
jurisdictions that rely on small system operators. Other,
more local, factors may also play a role, including the
higher proportional impacts of sprawl on smaller
communities.
Overall, these comparisons have demonstrated the
considerable range over which the meanings ascribed
to the term smart growth can vary across governments,
between the levels of government, and can apparently
shift with the political imperatives of different communities. The evidence from the forty-nine policy instruments examined also supports the presumption that the
pursuit of smart growth objectives need not necessarily
result in the imposition of detailed prescriptive planning, since, on average, fewer than half the planning
elements were incorporated in the smart growth
documents.
CONCLUSION
This review of definitions from a range of different
national organizations and of the uses and apparent
implementations of the smart growth label evident in
state and local government documents illustrates how
malleable the label is in practice. This does not necessarily mean that the term has become totally meaningless
or transformed into an excuse for any policies that an
agency wishes to promulgate. It does suggest that analysis of the impact of such policies and practices must
involve detailed examination of the nuances of implementation. It is clear that the combination of an explicit
What Is “Smart Growth?”
TABLE 6.
313
Breadth of “Planning” in Smart Growth Policies
(Percentage of Policies in
Both States That Encompass
the Particular Element)
Number of Policies
That Encompass the
Particular Element
Georgia
Kentucky
State level
(Total number of policies:
Georgia = 5, Kentucky = 5)
Comprehensive planning (40%)
Mixed land use (70%)
Increasing density (30%)
Street connectivity (0%)
Water infrastructure (10%)
Public service planning (60%)
4
3
2
0
0
3
0
4
1
0
1
3
Local level
(Total number of policies:
Georgia = 15, Kentucky = 15)
Comprehensive Planning (57%)
Mixed land use (77%)
Increasing density (53%)
Street connectivity (23%)
Water infrastructure (7%)
Public service planning (40%)
8
13
10
2
1
4
9
10
6
5
1
8
smart growth objective and reliance on one of the recognized smart growth implementation tools does not constitute a basis for classifying a policy as smart growth.
Since identification of the policy context in which
change occurs has tended to rely on dichotomous classifications (e.g., Dawkins and Nelson 2003), this poses a
dilemma for analysts of the impact of planning policies
and practices.
If a smart growth paradigm exists and is gaining real
acceptance, it should mature over time. When and if
that occurs, the maturation process may eventually
lead to greater convergence in the policies and practices
implemented. For the moment, however, this review of
a broad array of planning and policy documents suggests that there is little reason to assume a great deal of
commonality in the implementation process and
emphasis between two or more programs sharing the
smart growth label.
More thorough review of the genesis and development of different planning and smart growth practice
documents may assist this maturation process. Parsing
the diverse meanings of the terminology of the smart
growth paradigm may be essential to assisting property
owners and other stakeholders to address actual
impacts on their communities. With a fuller understanding of the divergent motives and objectives of the
different users of a common language, citizen participants in planning processes may be able to shape the
real meaning in practice of the currently amorphous
term, smart growth.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This study was made possible by a grant from the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the
University of Louisville Center for Environmental Policy and Management. Its findings, however, may not
necessarily reflect the agency’s view, and no official
endorsement should be inferred. Project funding from
EPA’s Region 4 dictated a focus on states in the southeastern United States, which influenced our use of
Georgia and Kentucky as exemplars in this study. The
authors want to acknowledge the constructive comments from the guest editor of this issue and three anonymous Journal of Planning Literature reviewers and
thank Karen Cairns for her professional editing of this
article. Errors and omissions, of course, remain our
responsibility.
APPENDIX
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NOTES
1. http://www.hud.gov/assist/siteindex.cfm.
2. http://www.hud.gov/cfo/glossary.html#S.
3. http://smartgrowth.net (not to be confused with Smart Growth
Network’s http://www.smartgrowth.org).
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