Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC)

Smart Communities: Curbing Sprawl at Its Core

Can community development and smart growth find common cause, share a common agenda, and serve mutual interests? Or are the aims of individual neighborhoods, resident-led development organizations, and central-city reinvestment necessarily at odds with those of regional planning and reduced sprawl?

This report finds that community developers have increasingly found themselves at the smart growth table, and metropolitanists have more and more come to regard community development projects as helpful, even necessary, for their own success. In the past several years, community development projects in employment, housing, transportation, and business development have often formed part of a wider regional agenda, and have included among their planners and investors an assortment of regional leaders and organizations.

The report is available at www.liscnet.org/resources/2002/11/communities_976.shtml?Planning+&+Land+Use