New Partners for Smart Growth: Day Two

Following on my post from the first day of New Partners for Smart Growth, here is a quick recap of Friday’s sessions:

Building a Powerful Regional Equity Coalition to Deliver on Sustainable Communities
Building on what I noted in the East Baltimore project, three organizations spoke about how they’re ensuring smart growth and redevelopment is inclusive of all residents, particularly marginalized communities. Urban Habitat, out of San Francisco, has developed a Board and Commission Leadership Institute, where they prepare and encourage members of marginalized communities to participate in civic boards and commissions. They’ve gone, in the words of CEO Allen Fernandez-Smith, from “the goal of influencing decision-makers to the goal of being the decision-makers”. San Francisco is also leading the way with a Local Hire Policy for public works, including a provision for employing residents from disadvantaged communities.

Farmers’ Market
For lunch we went to the Farmers’ Market at Cancer Survivors’ Park, adjacent to the conference hotel. California is leading the way with more than 700 farmers’ markets across the state, and this ties in well with San Diego’s thriving local food culture I noted in the Thursday recap.

Little Trips, Big Difference: Predicting Traffic for Mixed-Use Sites
As someone who values metrics and analytics, I was interested to see what’s being done to measure the efficacy, and continue to build the case for mixed-use developments (MXDs) and transit-oriented developments (TOD).

The speakers focused on 7 ‘Ds’ that reduce demand for trips and vehicular traffic:
– Density
– Diversity
– Design
– Destinations
– Distance to travel
– Development scale
– Demgraphics
– Demand management

Tools now can predict number and types of trips from factors such as how many jobs are available within 3 miles of a location. I see a real value in being able to demonstrate the value of MXDs over traditional suburban development in terms of environmental impact and infrastructure cost. I’m thinking some universal metric like baseball’s Wins Above Replacement.

Jobs, the Workforce, and the Economy: Rethinking the Role of Smart Growth and the Economy
Speaker Larry Fitch began by noting that economic growth is often seen as separate from the smart growth agenda, when in reality they’re heavily intertwined. This point is well-found. Smart growth and new urbanism need to be about more than a built form. The inherent economic benefits, and the potential economic opportunities for citizens, need to be a conscious part of this effort, and well-articulated as part of the vision as well. He also focused on the issue of transit and accessibility, and how without it residents can become marginalized. He used the example of his guitar instructor in San Diego, who has to take the bus an hour and a half to teach his 30 minute lesson.

Hop Hopkins, a community organizer in Los Angeles, spoke about what the Conservation Corps is doing to train workers from disadvantaged communities in emerging green industries. Programs like this point to the possibility of greater economic benefits, while also ensuring that residents of marginalized communities benefit, rather than are displaced from these efforts.

The State Center project in Baltimore is another example of this. An infill project just north of the Inner Harbor, development is filling in a suburban-style government office, providing affordable housing and community resources, and delivering economic inclusion by ensuring local hiring in the development process.

These are just two examples of how smart growth and new urbanism can be part of a new, more sustainable, economic agenda.

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