Smart Growth Principles:
1. Create Range of Housing Opportunities and Choices... No single type of housing can serve the varied needs of today’s diverse households or the variety of income levels required by any community to fill employment needs. Less than one-half of today’s households are married couples. While traditional suburban development still has appeal, there is an increasing market for the sense of community and convenience offered by compact, in town communities which offer a range of prices and types of quality built housing close to shopping, transportation, and services.
2. Create Walkable Neighborhoods... Pedestrian friendly neighborhoods permit lower transportation costs, greater social interaction, improved personal and environmental health, and expanded consumer choice – and if they are part of a mixed use community, they permit residents to walk to employment and services rather than depending entirely on the automobile. Many recent health studies have pointed to human health problems associated with sprawling development.
3. Encourage Community and Stakeholder Collaboration... Growth can create great places to live, work and play -- if it responds to a community’s own sense of how and where it wants to grow. The needs of every community and the programs to address them are best defined by the people who live and work there.
4. Foster Distinctive, Attractive Communities with a Strong Sense of Place... By creating high-quality communities with architectural and natural elements that reflect the interests of all residents, there is a greater likelihood that buildings (and therefore entire neighborhoods) will retain their economic vitality and value over time. In so doing, the infrastructure and natural resources used to create these areas will provide residents with a distinctive and beautiful place that they can call “home” for generations to come. Smart growth encourages communities to craft a vision and set standards for development and construction which respond to community values of architectural beauty and distinctiveness, as well as expanded choices in housing and transportation.
5. Make Development Decisions Predictable, Fair and Cost Effective... For a community to be successful in implementing smart growth, it must be embraced by the private sector. If investors, bankers, developers, builders, and others do not earn a profit, few smart growth projects will be built. For smart growth projects to flourish, governments must make an effort to make development decisions about smart growth more timely, cost-effective, and predictable for developers.
6. Mix Land Uses... Smart growth supports the integration of mixed land uses into communities as a critical component of achieving better places to live. By putting residences, retail, and employment in close proximity to one another, alternatives to driving, such as walking or biking, become possible. Mixed use can enhance the vitality and perceived security of an area by increasing the number and attitude of people on the street, and help streets, public spaces and pedestrian-oriented retail again become places where people meet, thereby attracting pedestrians back onto the street and helping to revitalize community life.
7. Preserve Open Space, Farmland, Natural Beauty and Critical Environmental Areas... Open space preservation supports smart growth goals by bolstering local economies, preserving critical environmental areas, improving our communities’ and residents’ quality of life, and guiding new growth into existing communities.
8. Provide a Variety of Transportation Choices... While Newton County is not served by public transit and is not likely to be in the near future, mixed use and walkable communities offer walking and biking as alternatives to the automobile. Newton County also has an active trails initiative.
9. Strengthen and Direct Development Towards Existing Communities... Smart growth directs development towards existing communities already served by infrastructure, thereby utilizing the resources that existing neighborhoods offer, and conserving open space and irreplaceable natural resources.
10. Take Advantage of Compact Building Design... Smart growth provides a means for communities to incorporate more compact building design as an alternative to conventional land consumptive development.