Increasing Resources for the
EPA Smart Growth Program
With a small amount of resources, EPA’s smart growth program has been a leader at the federal, state,
and local level. It has provided the start-up capital for LEED-ND and Growing Cooler (the definitive
work on smart growth and climate change). It has provided seed funding for the Governor’s Institute on
Community Design and provided direct assistance to more than 100 state and local governments on
smart growth—leading to the development of smart growth criteria for state spending in AZ and the
adoption of new zoning regulations in cities around the country. EPA should invest in this program’s
success with additional resources to take their activities to scale. Specific scale-up opportunities
include:

Additional staff and funding to lead an effort to align EPA policies and funding with smart growth
outcomes. The smart growth office has worked with the Brownfields Office, the Office of Air,
and most recently with the Office of Water to change the way programs are administered at the
Agency. The results have been impressive—the $4 billion Atlantic Station development which is
an award-winning brownfield redevelopment that saves 50 million miles of travel each year,
guidance from the office of air on taking credit for land use changes in SIPs, and the recent draft
phase II stormwater permit issued by the state of West Virginia containing specific credits for
smart growth infrastructure. To date these successes have been opportunistic rather than
systematic. Additional staff and funding can lead to broader changes within the Agency.

A Community Retrofit Pilot Program. The smart growth office has, through its technical
assistance, worked with numerous communities to help them address new growth and growth in
existing communities. It is clear that one of the greatest challenges we will face in the coming
decades is the challenge of retrofitting the places we have already built to be more energy
efficient, to provide more transportation and housing choices, and to reduce the water and air
pollution hot spots they have created. Modeled off of the Livable Communities Initiative in
Atlanta, a retrofit pilot program could offer dozens of planning/technical assistance grants to
communities across the country to create retrofit plans (similar to PlaNYC) and then offer large
implementation grants to those with the best plans. Implementation grants should be on the
same scale as the DOT Urban Partnership Grants (the final five cities in that program received a
total of $857 million). Grants on this scale would be enough to entice communities to change
their development rules, incentives, and capital spending providing the EPA with real leverage
against the investment. This pilot program could be an implementation mechanism for the
green jobs initiative which Senator Boxer has discussed housing within the EPA.

Increased resources to work with other federal agencies and the states. Development
outcomes are influenced by numerous factors. Focusing on the funding and rules that influence
development at the federal and state level provides the opportunity to influence outcomes that
are meaningful for achieving national environmental goals. The smart growth office already has
experience in each of these areas, working at the federal level with the US DOT, NOAA, and the
CDC and at the state level directly with Governors and their cabinet officials. EPA should
provide the smart growth office with the personnel and funding needed to engage these
partners in a more strategic, deep and ongoing fashion. The results of this type of work have
already demonstrated large returns. With an investment of roughly $100,000 EPA was able to
provide technical assistance in AZ that led to the creation of a smart growth scorecard. That
scorecard will influence the disposition of 10s of million in state capital expenditures.