What is Smart Growth?
Smart growth is an urban planning and development strategy that encourages environmentally sustainable, economically stable, and socially equitable societies. It aims to create compact, walkable urban neighborhoods with a variety of building kinds and purposes. The ideas of smart growth seek to reduce urban sprawl, improve transit options, stimulate community engagement, and create dynamic, livable neighborhoods. Smart growth aims to save land and reduce reliance on automobiles, resulting in a smaller environmental footprint.
What are the benefits?
- Higher-density: Smart growth promotes higher-density living and reduces sprawl, which helps to protect natural habitats, improve air and water quality, and reduce land use.
- Economic Stability: Compact, walkable communities lower transportation costs and attract businesses that flourish in densely populated metropolitan areas. This expansion approach has the potential to revive downtown areas while also boosting local economies.
- Social Equity: Smart growth encourages diversified, affordable housing alternatives and accessibility, allowing individuals of all income levels to access jobs, education, and recreational activities without excessive commuting.
- Enhanced Quality of Life: Smart growth promotes walkable communities and community-oriented living, which improves social connections and gives residents more opportunity to live, work, and play near together.
Niagara Regions Smart Growth Initiatives
The Niagara Falls Sustainability Plan focuses on sustainable land use and infrastructure development to maintain long-term environmental, economic, and social health. The plan focuses on revitalizing the city core, encouraging infill development to make optimal use of existing urban property, and maintaining precious open spaces and agricultural regions on the outskirts. By channeling growth inward, Niagara Falls hopes to limit sprawl, and preserve the natural landscapes.
The Brock District Plan focuses on developing an integrated community that benefits both Brock University and the local population. This plan calls for the establishment of additional residential areas, commercial spaces, and recreational amenities, all with the goal of encouraging walking and cycling. The plan’s key characteristics include improving connectivity between the institution and its surroundings through improved transportation links and pedestrian walkways, encouraging the use of public transportation, and incorporating green spaces into urban planning. This effort aims to not only provide required services and amenities to the university community, but also to boost regional economic development by making the area more appealing to potential investors and inhabitants.
Residential and commercial development is encouraged along key streets and business corridors, including townhouses, apartments, and commercial facilities with fewer than five stories. This technique guarantees that residential and commercial functions are integrated, resulting in vibrant, mixed-use communities that are easily accessible and walkable. Streets like St. Paul Street in St. Catharine’s and Victoria Avenue in Niagara Falls are good instances of how commercial operations on the ground level integrate smoothly with residential areas above, improving the area’s dynamics and utility.
