Action 1

The Administration, in partnership with leaders in all relevant sectors and the Smart Growth Network, should launch a public action campaign on smart growth. These partners should sponsor a five-year national campaign and dialogue addressing land use and growth issues through community and business action. The campaign should be launched at the National Town Meeting for a Sustainable America, which will take place May 2-5, 1999. The campaign should ask communities throughout America to identify natural assets and local and regional land use and growth issues; assess the impacts of sprawl-related problems; identify possible solutions and their benefits; identify ways to measure progress (i.e., establish indicators of progress); and make commitments to form or strengthen partnerships to implement solutions. The campaign would link to three other efforts: (1) National incentive programs for Smart Growth and Regional Cooperation; (2) Growing Smart, a five-year project funded by the federal government which provides a compendium of useful tools for states, regional entities, and local jurisdictions to consider, adopt, adapt, and use; and (3) Land-Based Classification Standards (LBCS), a project funded by several federal agencies and the American Planning Association. LBCS standardizes a broad variety of land use and development data collected and stored at the local, regional, state, and national levels, enabling jurisdictions, agencies, and institutions to share data more easily. Following the National Town Meeting for a Sustainable America, the Administration should work with leaders in all sectors and prominent civic journalists and media specialists to develop a communications strategy that can continue to promote, explain, and popularize sustainability and livability goals and concerns.

Smart growth awareness

This recommendation, while still relevant (much more dumb growth is going on than smart growth), needs updating. It would be best to incorporate this into recommendation 2 regarding education for sustainable development, as education about smart growth can be considered a subset of ESD.
Syndicate content