Smart Growth Quotes

By scrapping the government's centrally dictated density targets we'll ensure that the right type of new homes are built where they're needed, ending the glut of one- and two-bedroom flats.

The Italians have long known what makes a livable town or city.

Stockholm is surely an urban planner's dream. Everything works. Everything looks good.

If, instead of hiring half-baked revolutionary planners to fill our college undergraduates with ingenious schemes to disperse populations, split up big cities into little ones, go underground or into distant places to escape bombs and congestion, abandon large urban areas in favor of roadside villages, we were to publish reliable, simply written, common-sense information to control the building boom, what a country this would be!

Our overbuilt cities with their congestion, their trend to high office buildings and apartments, their complete indifference to the most elementary principles of civilian defense, their slums representing past neglect and greed, can to a considerable extent be rebuilt on better principles if we are smart enough to look the facts in the eye and brush off the Babbitts who hold that wherever the dirt flies there is progress. On the other hand, cities can not be revolutionized and turned into garden villages or green belts. In the suburbs and near-by country, however, we still have a chance to do the right thing without stultifying compromises....

The interests of Oregon for today and in the future must be protected from the grasping wastrels of the land. We must respect another truism - that unlimited and unregulated growth, leads inexorably to a lowered quality of life.

I think ultimately, bringing more nature back into the city is a way to deal with urban sprawl and things like that. If the cities feel a little more natural, people like to live there more rather than moving out and dividing up another piece of land that shouldn't be touched.

Many of them are doing it because they are concerned about smart growth.

Smart development builds on a region's own skills, resources and local businesses. Dumb growth invites a big corporation in, surrenders control and profits to a distant headquarters, undercuts local manufacturers, and risks layoffs without warning.

The biggest thing growing cities need to do is minimize barriers to development so that as long as someone is doing good urbanism, they can get permitted quickly and get building quickly.

What kind of town do we want in the future, and how are we going to plan on that?

Whether it's in in livability, transportation, or the environment, Portland is always leading the country. We have more to do before we achieve our goals, but we should all be encouraged by our progress and this recognition.

The Growing Smarter laws now in place compel every community to plan their future growth and allow every citizen the right to be heard when those decisions are made.

The best places to live, work, and visit are those places that are willing to uphold their standards in the face of pressure to allow lowest common denominator development... Successful communities understand that when they say no to development that is contrary to the long-term health of their community, they will almost always get better development in its place.

I grew up in a small town that was absolutely a perfect embodiment of new urbanism.

Sprawl is the American ideal way to develop. I believe that what we're developing in Denver is in no appreciable way different than what we're doing in Los Angeles - did in Los Angeles and are still doing. But I think we have developed the Los Angeles model of city-building, and I think it is unfortunate.

In the traditional modernist planning that created the suburbs, you put residential buildings in suburban neighborhoods, office spaces into brain parks and retail in shopping malls. But you fail to exploit the possibility of symbiosis or synthesis that way.

America is ready for livable communities. America is ready for high-speed rail.

It's very important that historic cities are allowed to reinvent their future.

When eco-towns were first announced we said that we would support environmentally-friendly development where local communities supported the home-building; where infrastructure was in place and where the growth was genuinely green.

We can build new housing while preserving the quality and character of adjacent residential districts and ensuring infill development strengthens the surrounding neighborhood.

I don't think of the New Urbanism as an economic or political train wreck. I think of it as one of these great generational upheavals that's coming.

Denser cities are smarter and more productive

I don't think we should allow our growth to overwhelm the qualities that are bringing it here, and some of those qualities will be overwhelmed if we just allow it to happen haphazardly.

If you design communities for automobiles, you get more automobiles. If you design them for people, you get walkable, livable communities.