This year, the National Complete Streets Coalition launched the Safe Streets Academy, a first of its kind technical assistance program where our experts not only worked with cities to develop knowledge and skills around Complete Streets practices, but also helped implement physical changes to streets. Each of the three cities in the Academy engaged the local community in designing a temporary safety improvement project to test ideas and designs. Once on the ground, we wrote up each project: how it was developed and implemented, the impact that it had, and the lessons that were learned. Orlando’s case study was the most popular, but don’t miss the stories about South Bend, IN (pictured) and Lexington, KY’s temporary projects. And we recently launched the second round of the Academy with three more cities, so stay tuned for more stories in 2019.
3. Best Complete Streets Initiatives of 2017, Rochester, NY’s Inner Loop East Transformation
The new federal Opportunity Zones program will go down as one of the most substantial government efforts to target community revitalization and economic development in America’s lowest income communities. But with the program still in its infancy, many state and local governments, foundations, advocates, and private sector professionals have questions about its implementation and operation across the 50 states, District of Columbia, and five U.S. territories. This webinar sought to answer some of those questions and provide some resources—like the Opportunity Zones Navigator—to help you understand Opportunity Zones.
6. Calvin Gladney selected as President and CEO
We launched Smart Growth America’s first-ever podcast series in 2018, Building Better Communities with Transit. Each month, a new episode explores an aspect of transit-oriented development (TOD)—an innovative project, a unique funding strategy, or other policies that are crucial to successful TOD. Our most popular episode thus far was a our feature on the KC Streetcar, the two-year-old downtown circulator that has been responsible for transforming downtown Kansas City, MO, turning old surface parking lots into new housing, office spaces, hotels, and businesses. You can listen to this episode (Episode 5) and all of our podcast episodes on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
9. Have we zoned great, walkable places out of existence?