Smart
growth provides a means for communities to incorporate
more compact building design as an alternative
to conventional, land consumptive development.
Compact building design suggests that communities
be designed in a way which permits more open
space to preserved, and that buildings can be
constructed which make more efficient use of
land and resources. By encouraging buildings
to grow vertically rather than horizontally,
and by incorporating structured rather than
surface parking, for example, communities can
reduce the footprint of new construction, and
preserve more greenspace. Not only is this approach
more efficient by requiring less land for con-struction.
It also provides and protects more open, undeveloped
land that would exist otherwise to absorb and
filter rain water, reduce flooding and stormwater
drainage needs, and lower the amount of pollution
washing into our streams, rivers and lakes.
Compact
building design is necessary to support wider
transportation choices, and provides cost savings
for localities. Communities seeking to encourage
transit use to reduce air pollution and congestion
recognize that minimum levels of density are
required to make public transit networks viable.
Local governments find that on a per-unit basis,
it is cheaper to provide and maintain services
like water, sewer, electricity, phone service
and other utilities in more compact neighborhoods
than in dispersed communities.
Research
based on these developments has shown, for example,
that well-designed, compact New Urbanist communities
that include a variety of house sizes and types
command a higher market value on a per square
foot basis than do those in adjacent conventional
suburban developments. Perhaps this is why increasing
numbers of the development industry have been
able to successfully integrate compact design
into community building efforts. This despite
current zoning practices – such as those
that require minimum lot sizes, or prohibit
multi-family or attached housing – and
other barriers - community perceptions of “higher
density” development, often preclude compact
design.
