In 2010, the Massachusetts DOT announced its GreenDOT initiative, which focuses on three main goals: reducing greenhouse gas emissions, promoting healthy transportation options, and encouraging smart growth development throughout the state. In recent testimony to the state’s House Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change, and in a subsequent SSTI webinar, Ned Codd, MassDOT’s Assistant Secretary for GreenDOT, stressed the agency’s commitment to reducing statewide emissions.
smart growth
Our Built and Natural Environments: A Technical Review of the Interactions Among Land Use, Transportation, and Environmental Quality (EPA, 2013)
The EPA’s Office of Sustainable Communities Smart Growth Program offers this comprehensive review on how the built environment – the way we build our cities and towns – directly affects our environment and public health. It provides evidence that certain kinds of land use and transportation strategies – where and how we build our communities – can reduce the environmental and human health impacts of development.
Land Use and Traffic Congestion (AZ Department of Transportation Research Center, 2012)
A first-ever analysis of land-use and transportation demand in Arizona contradicts fears that compact, “smart growth” development, while beneficial in moderating demand, will increase localized congestion. The report, produced for Arizona DOT in March, also suggests that traditional travel demand modeling is outmoded, unable to reflect land use effects on demand, and it disputes notions that compact development is inequitable and costly.
CT paper cites PlanMaryland as good example
The Hartford Courant would like to see Connecticut adopt some of the smart growth policies that are in the new Maryland plan before it is too late. They see the update of the 1990s Maryland …
Shining a light: New York City’s new zoning handbook
In releasing a new zoning handbook, New York City’s Planning Commissioner, Amanda Burden, extolled its virtues: “Zoning is the language of the city, it is a three-dimensional blueprint for what any area of the city …