Concepts

15 minute town

• Definition: an urban planning concept in which most daily necessities and services, such as work, shopping, education, healthcare, and leisure can be easily reached by a 15 minute walk or bike ride from any point in the town (source: Wikipedia)

Affordable Housing

• Definition: housing where the occupant is paying 30% or less of the gross income on total housing including utilities (source: US Dept of Housing and Urban Development) (Source: Wikipedia)
• Concept: Incremental Housing is a priority concept from Strong Towns, which encourages communities to embrace restrictive housing policies; embraces local development, ADUs (accessory dwelling units), multi-family dwelling options, etc

End Highway Expansion (v. maintain what we have)

• Concept: a priority concept from Strong Towns, which encourages governments to recognize that building new roads are a future maintenance expense, along with other unintended consequences.

Missing Middle Housing

• Definition: refers to a lack of medium-density housing in the North American context. It is often characterized by a range of multi-family or clustered housing types that are compatible in scale with single-family or transitional neighborhoods. It is usually used to describe a phenomenon in Canada and the United States, and those countries which have sought to replicate their style of urban planning, which lacks this type of medium-density housing due to car dependent suburban sprawl and zoning regulations. (source: Wikipedia)
• Articles
  • How Missing Middle Housing Creates More Vibrant Neighborhoods | Architect Magazine
  • Missing middle: Why form and scale matter | CNU
  • Missing-Middle-Brief-December-2022.pdf (berkeley.edu)
  • How Missing Middle Housing Can Boost Livability, Attainability – Multi-Housing News (multihousingnews.com)
  • Unlocking the Potential of Missing Middle Housing – Terner Center (berkeley.edu)
• Toolbox: missingmiddlehousing.com | Enable Missing Middle Housing

Mixed-use Development

• Definition: type of development (design/ planning / zoning) classification that blends multiple uses, such as residential, commercial, cultural, institutional or entertainment into one space, where those functions are to some degree physically and functionally integrated and that provides pedestrian connections (source: Wikipedia)
• Article: the Lost Art of Mixed-Use Development (source: Strong Towns)
• Toolbox: Complete communities | Mixed-use development (source: University of Delaware)

Placemaking

• Definition: a multi-faceted approach to the planning, designing and/or management of public spaces; capitalizing on a local community’s assets, inspiration and potential; working toward evolving public spaces that improve community vitality and promote health, happiness and well-being (source: Wikipedia)
• Placemaking definition, examples, training and other resources (source: Project for Public Spaces)
• Article: 4 types of placemaking (source: Congress for the New Urbanism)

Safe and Productive Streets

• Definition: a priority concept from Strong Towns, which encourages communities to embrace intentional decisions about streets, traffic patterns and the communities they support.

Small scale (local) development

• Definition: a movement that prioritizes local development in communities, as contrasted by bigger developers from outside the community. Often the development goals relate to specific community needs (i.e. renovating historically significant structures, affordable housing, infill construction, specific business or service needs, etc).
• Toolkit: Small-scale developers & builders (source: Congress for the New Urbanism)
• Article: How to become a Small-scale developer (source: Realtor Magazine)
• Free download: How do we get more Small-scale developers (source: Strong Towns)

Smart Growth Economic Development

• Definition: a planning theory that concentrates growth in ways that avoids sprawl by concentrating on walkable communities through businesses/ service density (source: Wikipedia); the intersection of Supporting Businesses, Workers an quality of Life (source: EPA)
• Toolkit: Framework for creating a Smart Growth Economic Development Strategy: A Tool for Small Cities and Towns (source EPA)
• Online learning: Smartgrowth.org

Transparent Local Accounting

• Concept: A priority concept from Strong Towns, which encourages local government accounting to be more transparent for many reasons.
• Online learning: Home Page – Urban3 (urbanthree.com)

Walkability

• Definition: a planning concept where people can access most people in a small town or neighborhood can access amenities and services (e.g grocery stores, schools, parks, libraries, restaurants, coffee shops, etc) by foot, thus reducing the need for cars for travel (source: Wikipedia).
• Book: An idealized walk, per author and urban planner Jeff Speck (in his book Walkable City) would include the characteristics of being useful, safe, comfortable and interesting.
• Toolkit: Neighborhood “walkability” scores are provided by Walkscore.com. Small town walkability scores may not provide the most accurate representation, but may still provide insight (see ‘about your score’)

Zoning

• Definition: land use laws that fall under the police power rights of the state and local governments to exercise authority over privately owned real-estate property (source: Wikipedia)
• Concept: End Parking Mandates & subsidies is a priority concept from Strong Towns, which encourages zoning changes around parking
• Concept: Single-family zoning is a type of planning restriction applied to certain residential zones in the US in order to restrict development to only allow single-family detached homes. It disallows townhomes, duplexes and multifamily housing (apartments) from being built on any plot of land with this zoning designation. (source: Wikipdia) – and is a topic being revisited in light of housing affordability struggles in many communities.