In the summer of 2003, six leading nonprofit organizations representing diverse interests - the Boston Society of Architects/Civic Initiative (BSA-CI), Citizens' Housing and Planning Association (CHAPA), Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), Environmental League of Massachusetts (ELM), Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston (FHCGB), and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) - joined to promote Smart Growth in Massachusetts. By working together we exemplify the collaborative partnerships that are essential to creating a future Massachusetts that offers all its citizens choice, prosperity, opportunity and environmental health in well-designed communities. We are working to create a wider network of partnerships with other organizations to strengthen the statewide voice for Smart Growth.

What is Smart Growth?

Smart Growth is about answering three questions: Where do we want to grow? How do we want to grow? How much do we want to grow? It is about preserving our environment, enhancing our quality of life, supporting our economic competitiveness, and distributing the benefits and burdens of development more fairly. The members of the Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance share a common vision of Massachusetts: healthy, diverse and prosperous communities; working landscapes and critical environmental resources protected from development; urban reinvestment and community development; transportation and housing choice and affordability; and regional equity and opportunity.

Why and Why Now

Massachusetts's population has been growing very slowly, but we are consuming land seven times faster than our population growth rate. Sprawl is overwhelming our traditional Massachusetts landscape of historic cities, lively, compact villages, and bucolic towns. Low density, haphazard development of houses, office buildings, and stores has dire consequences: dwindling water supplies, urban disinvestment, loss of open space and biodiversity, lack of housing choice and affordability, hours wasted in traffic, loss of economic competitiveness with declining quality of life. Experience from around the country has shown that state leadership is critical to taming sprawl. Our state's approach to development and land use has devolved into a collection of isolated programs, incentives and disincentives that often work at cross-purposes. The Romney Administration's explicit commitment to a Smart Growth agenda, along with growing support for Smart Growth reforms in the legislature and in local communities, offers an unprecedented opportunity to make significant achievements in advancing Smart Growth policies and approaches.

Our Smart Growth Principles

• Protect and preserve environmental resources, open space, working landscapes and unique natural environments, and reduce air and water pollution.
• Promote diverse housing types in all communities to enable households from a wide range of economic levels, cultures and age groups to live and work within their boundaries.
• Foster economic and social equity and provide choice and opportunity for all Massachusetts residents.
• Reinforce our tradition of compact, walkable cities, towns and villages by encouraging lively, mixed-use development near existing infrastructure and promoting efficient land use that minimizes sprawl.
• Invest in transportation choices, including high quality public transit services, which provide alternatives to automobile use.
• Encourage fiscal policies that allow all communities within a region to share in the benefits and responsibilities of growth.
• Promote local, regional and state planning and investment to promote smart growth.
• Promote sustainable, shared prosperity through economic investment and development policies that provide jobs and opportunity, strengthen communities, and streamline development processes that avoid sprawl.
• Encourage development that conserves resources, minimizes waste, utilizes good design, promotes health and enhances the community in which it is located.

The Alliance Program

The Alliance recently received a significant foundation grant to begin its work on an ambitious shared agenda:

• Policy and advocacy efforts for administrative and legislative reforms and capital investment decisions that will achieve Smart Growth outcomes.
• Education, outreach and organizing for a diverse, broad-based constituency for Smart Growth throughout the Commonwealth.
• Research and analysis for the tools and information needed to build the case for Smart Growth reforms, policies, and investments.
• Targeted engagement in place-based projects and campaigns that provide on-the-ground demonstrations of Smart Growth in action.

Kristina Egan, Director 617-263-1257   kristina@ma-smartgrowth.org