Following are excerpts from a May 1999 report released by the President's Council on Sustainable Development, entitled "Building Livable Communities for the 21st Century." Formed in 1993, the council has been a leading force in the movement to promote prosperity and opportunity in communities while at the same time seeking to reduce pressures on the environment. These goals are reinforced by the council's vision statement calling for a "life-sustaining Earth" that supports "a dignified, peaceful, and equitable existence." The preface of the council's report states: "The council, building on the wisdom of citizens, and business and government leaders, has sought in this report to articulate the goal of a sustainable America in terms of concrete ideas, examples of success, and proposals for national policy. From creative ways to eliminate pollution to mortgages that fight sprawl, the council's report highlights approaches that work and has built consensus around innovative ideas."

Effective responses to the challenges and opportunities posed by the new American landscape cannot originate in Washington, D.C. They must arise in communities across the nation as concerned citizens join in partnership with civic and business leaders.

Indeed, a wave of local innovation already is sweeping across America. Communities and regions are taking imaginative steps to tackle economic, social, safety, and environmental challenges posed by our new patterns of development. This wave of community-based activity was recently described in the final report of the National Commission on Civic Renewal, chaired by William Bennett and former Senator Sam Nunn.

Within the neighborhoods, the towns, the local communities of America are the stirrings of a new movement of citizens acting together to solve community problems. It is a nonpartisan movement that crosses traditional jurisdictions and operates on a shoestring. It is a movement that begins with civic dialogue and leads to public action.

In many cases, communities are making progress not by treating their problems in isolation, but by reaching out to partners in their neighborhoods and regions. New partnerships are emerging in a few places as cities, suburbs and rural areas begin to work together, recognizing that their problems -- such as abandoned brownfields in cities and the loss of open space in the outer suburbs -- are tied together. Other partnerships emerge as the private sector and community-based groups join together with civic leaders to tackle the economic, social, safety, and environmental challenges facing their communities.

Some communities are beginning to question common assumptions about growth and development. While growth is essential to our continued economic prosperity, the individuals and communities involved in these partnerships are beginning to evaluate the costs of current growth patterns. They are questioning the economic costs of abandoning infrastructure in the city, only to rebuild it in the suburbs. They are questioning costs to our quality of life from ever increasing traffic congestion. In other words, people and communities are trying to distinguish types of growth that solve and prevent problems from those that cause problems. They want to promote sustainable growth -- growth of jobs, wages, educational achievement, and time with family -- but not growth of pollution, poverty, commute times, and crime. Those who make such distinctions are not "no growth" advocates, or even "slow growth "advocates. They want the jobs, tax revenues, and amenities that development can provide. But they want it without degrading their environment, unduly raising their local taxes, or diminishing their quality of life. And, they are beginning to believe that continuing our current development patterns won't achieve these goals. They are in the vanguard of a consensus emerging at the community level in support of a better way to grow: smart growth.

Smart growth represents efforts to promote new patterns of development that are:

• Economically smart because they build upon past investments in existing communities; do not require heavy tax increases in suburban areas to pay for new public services; reduce congestion and thereby increase personal time; and preserve prime farmland for agricultural use.

• Environmentally smart because they encourage the redevelopment of brownfields sites; and reduce threats to air quality, water quality, and open space.

• Socially smart because they promote economic opportunity and encourage a "sense of community" and a "sense of place" within communities and across regions by bringing citizens, businesses, and governments together to solve common problems.

Once the province of a small group of citizen activists, smart growth efforts have blossomed into a broad-based movement intent upon improving America's communities. Citizens once silent are finding a voice. Places once abandoned are being reborn. Land once endangered is being preserved. Battlegrounds are giving way to common ground, as people once adversaries are becoming partners in place.

Local and State Smart Growth Efforts

Proof that smart growth efforts are spreading across the country can be found in the November 1998 election returns. From Ventura County, California, to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, voters approved more than 200 ballot measures addressing growth-related concerns. In New Jersey, voters overwhelmingly approved $1,000 million in expenditures over 10 years to preserve half of the state's remaining open space. Voters in Michigan approved $675 million in bonds that can be used for brownfields cleanup, parks, and urban waterfront redevelopment. In Florida, $3,000 million will be provided over the next 10 years for acquiring and maintaining land for recreation and preservation. In total, over $7,000 million was approved for preserving open space that is threatened by development pressures.

This new movement didn't materialize overnight. For several years, new partnerships have been emerging as concerns about sprawl have grown. The breadth of these new partnerships was demonstrated in 1995 when four very different organizations -- the Bank of America, the State of California's Resource Agency, the Greenbelt Alliance, and the Low Income Housing Fund -- joined together to produce a report entitled "Beyond Sprawl: New Patterns of Growth to Fit the New California." The groundbreaking report declared that:

"One of the most fundamental questions we face is whether California can afford to support the pattern of urban and suburban development, often referred to as 'sprawl,' that has characterized its growth since World War II.

This is not a call for limiting growth, but a call for California to be smarter about how it grows -- to invent ways we can create compact and efficient growth patterns that are responsive to the needs of people at all income levels, and can also help to maintain California's quality of life and economic competitiveness."

Across the nation cities, counties, and towns are pioneering a wide range of innovative responses to the challenges posed by sprawl:

• In February, 1998, the Austin, Texas City Council announced a Smart Growth initiative and charged a council subcommittee with overhauling the city's land development code to develop a neighborhood-based planning framework, provide incentives for in-fill development, and simplify the development process.

• Over the past 18 months, 11 cities in northern California have enacted urban growth boundaries in an effort to focus future development in existing communities.

• In March 1999, the city of Tucson, Arizona, working with local developers and the federal Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing, inaugurated a new 2600-unit housing development with a pedestrian-friendly design and homes that will use half the energy of typical new homes in the area. The community worked together to craft regulations that encouraged the design of a mixed residential, commercial, and light industrial development that is an attractive place to live and work, and offers enormous environmental benefits.

• The city of Fort Collins, Colorado, is expediting permitting (issuance of building permits) for exemplary developments with superior environmental performance.

• The city of Charleston, South Carolina, is creating dispersed affordable housing that revitalizes neighborhoods and spurs private investment.

• The city of St. Louis, St. Louis County, and the state of Missouri are using their new "Metrolink" transit system as a potential focal point for new development. This "transit-oriented development" approach seeks to integrate land use and transportation planning to provide more walkable communities while easing traffic congestion.

• The city of Minneapolis recently joined the Minnesota Smart Growth Network, which includes more than 20 nonprofit, government, and business organizations, including the Metropolitan Council, the St. Paul Port Authority, and the Builders' Association of the Twin Cities. The network is facilitated by the nonprofit 1000 Friends of Minnesota, which works to balance growth with conservation and social equity.

States share land use responsibilities with local communities, and a growing number are launching innovative programs to encourage and support local smart growth efforts:

• Under the leadership of Governor Parris Glendening, the state of Maryland has taken the first steps toward implementing a statewide smart growth strategy. Citing exploding fiscal costs, loss of green space, threats to the health of the Chesapeake Bay, and infrastructure maintenance shortfalls, Glendening formed a bipartisan coalition within the state legislature to enact smart growth legislation in 1997. Under the new legislation, local governments designate "smart growth areas" using state criteria (e.g., density, existing roads, water and sewer service). Local governments continue to designate where development may and may not go. But state dollars will only support development in smart growth areas served by existing infrastructure.

• Georgia Governor Roy Barnes recently signed landmark legislation creating the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority to coordinate and oversee the Atlanta region's fight against traffic, pollution and sprawl. The Authority's 15-member board is charged with producing a comprehensive transportation strategy for the region by year's end. Alan Ehrenhalt, editor of Governing magazine, commented in The New York Times: "The law places Governor Barnes at the head of a sprawl-fighting superagency that can practically dictate land-use decisions all over the metropolitan area. It can tell the state transportation department not to build a highway. It can tell a county not to allow a new shopping mall. It can build and operate a mass transit system in any of the jurisdictions surrounding Atlanta, then force those jurisdictions to pay for it by threatening to take away their state financing."

• In Pennsylvania, the final report of Governor Tom Ridge's 21st Century Environment Commission concluded that "the need to change our patterns of land use (is) the most immediate issue to address." The commission found that:

  "Growing communities are good, but our sprawling patterns of growth are not. It is important that Pennsylvanians acknowledge the difference and recognize that we are using land inefficiently and unsustainably....Sprawl harms the environment, increases the cost of infrastructure and exacerbates the abandonment of existing communities."

  In response, Governor Ridge this year launched a five-year $1,300-million Growing Greener Initiative, which redirects $425 million to the new Environmental Stewardship Fund, adds $44 million for open space protection, and restructures $900 million to promote sound land use across the state.

• Utah Governor Mike Leavitt recently signed into law the Utah Quality Growth Act of 1999, which establishes a Quality Growth Commission to help lawmakers and localities with sound growth planning and management. It also creates a $6 million fund to preserve agricultural land and open space.

• Gov. Don Sundquist and the Tennessee legislature approved a bill in May 1998, directing cities and counties to develop joint plans for urban growth and open space preservation. The plans will project growth for 20 years, with adjustments every three years.

• In January 1998, former Ohio Governor George V. Voinovich issued an executive order, titled Ohio Farmland Protection Policy, directing state agencies to take the protection of productive farmland into consideration when they make policy decisions affecting land acquisition and development.
  
  
• In her 1998 "state of the state" address, Governor Christine Todd Whitman emphasized the need for smart growth. "Every part of New Jersey suffers when we plan haphazardly," she said. "Sprawl eats up our open space. It creates traffic jams that boggle the mind and pollute the air. Sprawl can make one feel downright claustrophobic about our future."