Smart Growth is an "umbrella" term that covers a variety of different techniques and strategies, only some of which are applicable to any given situation. Strategies for improving mobility and other aspects of quality-of-life and reducing travel-related impacts fall under the following general headings:
Transit and TOD
- Matching the transit mode to its development context
- Transit service improvements
- Transit-supportive land use
- Conversion of station-area parking to TOD
Community Visioning
- Interactive outreach processes
- Infill development
- Development density
- Land use mix
- Urban design
- Transit-supportive land use
- Rethinking parking
Livable Streets
- Context-sensitive street design
- Network connectivity
- Narrow streets and traffic calming
- Multi-modal LOS
- LOS policies linked to community character
- Pedestrian friendliness
- Facilitating bike trips
Transit and TOD
Matching the transit mode to its development context: In keeping with local transit agencies' ridership development strategies and Federal Transit Administration criteria for transit New Starts and Small Starts funding programs, tailor development densities to meet thresholds of effectiveness for intended transit modes. Local bus, express bus, bus rapid transit (BRT), light rail (LRT), Commuter Rail, and Rail Rapid Transit require progressively higher levels of development density to support capital investment and operating costs. Transit suitability studies, including density mapping and direct ridership modeling, quantify the land use types and densities needed to generate sufficient ridership for different transit technologies. Initial screening can be accomplished through comparisons of potential transit corridors with analogous successful transit lines and stations.
 
Transit service improvements: Employ measures such as increasing transit service frequencies, operating speeds, service coordination, and fare simplification to attract additional ridership and reduce automobile mode share. Other techniques to improve transit levels of service include multi-modal streets, transit boulevards, and operational improvements such as signal prioritization, skip-stop operation and efficient boarding associated
with BRT.
Transit-supportive land use: Add jobs, housing and retail near transit. Transit-supportive land use should be placed within reasonable walking distance of transit. The effective walk-shed radius varies by transit mode: approximately ¼ mile for bus transit, and up to ½ mile for rail transit. High-quality urban design and features that improve walkability are important elements of transit-supportive land use.
Conversion of station-area parking to TOD: When developed at sufficient densities, TOD can produce higher transit utilization and lower auto use than transit station parking. Elimination or reduction of parking at those stations best suited to park-and-ride activity can generate unacceptable impacts, but at certain locations converting parking to high-density TOD can, in aggregate terms, increase transit ridership and reduce auto mode shares.
Community Visioning
Interactive outreach processes: Regional and community visioning processes have proven to be successful means of engaging the public and key stakeholders in a conscientious planning and consensus building effort. Smaller scale planning efforts such as streetscape plans and transit station-area plans also benefit from similar approaches. The most effective visioning processes make use of interactive planning and analysis tools to assess the impacts of alternative scenarios and planning concepts. Such techniques provide real-time feedback to workshop participants, allowing them to envision the consequences of their visions in terms of pre-selected evaluation criteria, such as land consumption, vehicle travel and air quality.
 
Envision Utah
Sacramento Region Blueprint
Infill development: A key Smart Growth strategy is to locate new development on vacant infill sites, redevelopment areas, and available grayfield and brownfield sites. One major advantage of developing at such locations is the opportunity to capitalize on their proximity to other regional destinations and to major transportation services. The benefits of such a development location can be measured in terms of the site's relative accessibility to all other activities in the region, which correlate with reductions in vehicle trip generation per capita.
Development density: Elevating the numbers of residents and jobs per acre is often a valuable Smart Growth planning objective when accompanied by high levels of regional accessibility, a robust mixture of uses, and high-quality urban design.
Land use mix: Areas with good balance between jobs and housing as well as a mix of retail and non-retail jobs tend to promote shorter trips and more non-motorized trips. The custom of separating land use types into separate zones is a holdover from the days when non-residential land uses were often highly polluting and dangerous. Now that most jobs are office work, personal services, or retail sales, the rationale for keeping them spatially distant from residential areas (their workers and customers) has disappeared. Mixing of land uses can greatly shorten trip distances and allow more trips to be done by walking or by bicycle. Also, there is a general perception that bedroom suburbs that are “dead” during the day and downtown areas that are “dead” at night are socially undesirable and unpleasant. Smart growth strategies for dealing with this include allowing neighborhood-serving retail uses and offices to be located in residential areas, and encouraging the development of medium- and high-density housing in or near downtown areas. The mix of uses needs to be present within walking/biking distance or, secondarily, short driving distance.
Urban design: Walkable neighborhoods reduce vehicle travel. The benefits are measurable where street networks are interconnected, fine-grained and crossable, and where pedestrian networks offer high levels of sidewalk completeness and amenities.
Transit-supportive land use: Added jobs, housing and retail near transit have been demonstrated to increase transit ridership and reduce vehicle trip generation per household.
Why People Don't Walk and What Planners Can Do About It
Focused Growth Alternatives
Encouraging Mixed Use in Practice
Rethinking parking: Some jurisdictions require large amounts of parking space for individual businesses, residential complexes, or both. The result is large “dead” spaces that are visually unattractive and that make it harder for pedestrians to walk to building entrances. A better strategy would be to provide parking through shared municipal lots placed behind pedestrian-oriented mixed-use streets. Shared lots take advantage of the fact that different land use types need parking at different times of the day, so the demand at any given time is less than the aggregation of demand of the individual uses.
Smart Growth Online
Rethinking Residential Parking
Livable Streets
Context-sensitive street design: Also referred to as Context Sensitive Solutions, this idea has become an accepted approach to designing or re-designing streets to be more compatible with adjoining uses and more accommodating to all modes of travel. States such as New Jersey , Maryland and California have adopted context sensitive design policies that consider the impact of design decisions on abutting land uses, community character, and the comfort and convenience of pedestrians, cyclists, and transit users as well as automobiles. Techniques include more rigorous management of traffic speeds, narrowing the traffic realm while expanding the pedestrian realm, accommodating bikes and transit, using curb parking as a buffer between moving traffic and sidewalk activities, and improving the sidewalk environment and ability of pedestrians to cross the street.
 
Network connectivity: Since the 1960s, many suburban developments have been built with internal road networks consisting of looped roads and cul-de-sacs. Field experience with this pattern has shown that they increase average trip lengths, discourage pedestrian trips, and concentrate trips onto the primary road network. In contrast, older neighborhoods with a grid pattern of streets and small blocks were found to have much shorter trips, more walking, and less impact on major roads. The best-practice strategy is for new communities to use either a grid or grid-like street pattern.
Residential Street Pattern Design
Roadway Connectivity
Narrow streets and traffic calming: One legitimate concern regarding grid street patterns is the fear that they will encourage cut-through traffic. This problem occurs when residential streets are so wide that they allow drivers to proceed at speeds similar to those they would have encountered on the collector or arterial street that forms the alternate route. One solution to this problem is to design residential streets to have narrow widths and short block lengths, both of which tend to reduce driving speeds. Other effective traffic calming methods include:
 
Sierra Club
TrafficCalming.org
Narrow Streets Database
Multi-modal LOS: A useful technique is to modify local LOS standards to take into account the transportation system experience of all travelers and all modes, not just automobile drivers. Delays and other discomforts for transit users, cyclists and pedestrians are quantified and included, along with automobile delays, in the determination of multi-modal LOS. This can result in situations where the LOS for vehicles is reduced as a tradeoff for improved conditions for pedestrians and bicyclists. Another strategy is to use alternate measures of effectiveness to assess automobile service, such as overall trip time rather than operating LOS at individual intersections. This can be more consistent with the intent of most Smart Growth projects which focus on the appeal of the created place and its accessibility to all users. Travel time relates closely to drivers' perception of their travel experience, while LOS is an engineer's term related to sizing the capacity of transportation infrastructure.
 
LOS policies linked to community character: Many jurisdictions have LOS standards that relate only to vehicular traffic and result in streets and intersections that are overly wide and difficult for pedestrians and bicyclists to cross. Such policies tend to penalize infill development by ignoring its potential to reduce trip lengths and divert some trips to transit. These policies can also have considerable impact on community character by imposing over-sized streets and intersections in areas where context sensitive solutions would be more in keeping with community values. Alternative strategies include waiving or relaxing LOS standards at locations designated as downtown or transit-first areas, or broadening the methods used to determine LOS to take into account all travel modes.
Pedestrian friendliness: A key goal of the smart growth movement is to create neighborhoods that people enjoy walking around in. The minimum requirement is to provide sidewalks and safe street crossings. However, providing shade trees, planter strips, landscaping, benches, and other amenities can make an enormous qualitative difference in the pedestrian environment.
Walkable Communities
America Walks
WalkingInfo.org
Facilitating bike trips: Bicycles can extend the distances people can travel without autos. They can also work well with buses and trains for multi-modal trips. The design challenge for accommodating bicycles is that they are vehicles and so must be separated from pedestrians, and yet are too slow and vulnerable to mix well with the motorized traffic stream on higher-volume streets. The best strategy for accommodating bicycle trips is to provide adequate bicycle lanes and to educate the driving public on the need to share the road with bicyclists.
BicyclingInfo.org
BicycleSafe.com
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