Smart growth is an approach to planning that directs new development into compact, walkable, mixed-use communities, usually near existing infrastructure and transit, instead of spreading it across undeveloped land.
Its principles, promoted in the United States by the Smart Growth Network and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, include mixing land uses, building compactly, offering a range of housing and transportation choices, and preserving open space. Parking is central to whether those principles work, because large parking requirements spread buildings apart and make walking and transit less practical.
Parking in smart growth
- Lower or no parking minimums near transit.
- Shared parking among uses with different peak times.
- Unbundled parking, priced separately from housing or office space.
- District garages that let people park once and walk, instead of a lot for every building.
The Parkonomics view
Smart growth succeeds or fails in the parking code. A compact plan with suburban parking requirements builds the parking first and the place second. Right-size the supply, share it, and price it, and the walkable district the plan describes has room to happen.
Related terms: New Urbanism, Transit-Oriented Development, Parking Minimums, Shared Parking, Land-Use Planning, Stroad