Colorado Smart Growth Scorecard
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1 Welcome The Colorado Smart Growth Scorecard Welcome! This tool has been prepared by the Colorado Center for Healthy Communities, in partnership with The Orton Family Foundation. This project has been made possible through the financial support from the Gates Family Foundation and local governments, and the financial and staff support of The Orton Family Foundation. The Colorado Smart Growth Scorecard is adapted from the Vermont Smart Growth Scorecard with the permission of the Vermont Forum on Sprawl. COLORADO CENTER ORTON FAMILY VERMONT FORUM FOR HEALTHY FOUNDATION ON SPRAWL COMMUNITIES www.orton.org www.vtsprawl.org www.coloradocenter.org Helps citizens of rural Works to preserve Works to increase America define the Vermont's unique awareness and future, shape the working landscape implementation of growth and preserve and quality of life while encouraging innovations and tools to create health and the heritage of their communities. economic vitality in community centers. wealth in communities. Programs include: Programs and projects include: The Center is managed by Healthy Mountain Communities. HMC works to • CommunityVizTM: GIS based decision • Vermont Smart Growth Collaborative create collaborative solutions, regional support software that helps communities • New Models for Commercial and strategies and decision-support tools in visualize and analyze various growth Industrial Development the Roaring Fork and Colorado River and preservation options. • Way to Grow! Educational Programs Valleys. (www.hmccolorado.org) • Community Mapping: a program in • Vermont Neighborhoods Program schools where students work with local • Healthy Neighborhoods/Healthy Kids Colin Laird community partners to study land use • On-Line Community Assessment Tool Colorado Center for Healthy Communities issues and resources, producing maps and On-Line Planning Courses c/o Healthy Mountain Communities and information helpful to the partners P.O. Box 1582 and communities. See Carbondale, Colorado 81623 www.communitymap.org 970-963-5502 / [email protected] • Community Video: the foundation has produced a "how to" manual enabling communities to produce a video focusing on the land use issues they have faced and expect to face. The video has been used to resuscitate citizen participation, begin a town planning exercise, help communities focus on emerging needs, etc. • Orton online: Educational programs and diagnostic tools regarding land use. © 2003 Healthy Mountain Communities, Orton Family Foundation & Vermont Forum on Sprawl 2 3 Sections I Compact Centers II Transportation Options III Housing Affordability IV Walkable Communities V Natural Capital VI Business Diversity VII Fiscal Analysis VIII Regional Cooperation Trend is not destiny. IX Sense of Place -- Rene Dubois “ X Public Involvement Here is a step-by-step guide: ” To keep the Scorecard pages clean for future use, we suggest that you make as many copies as you’ll need of the scoresheet on page 29. Use this sheet, and/or invite others to use it, to note and tabulate answers. Work through Sections 1-10. To answer each question most accurately and usefully, check the TIPS FOR ANSWERING QUESTIONS in each section. Enter your choices on the scoring sheet. Add up your scores for each individual section. You’ll notice that the answers tending toward smart growth receive the most weight – the higher your score, the better. Compare each section total to the scoring ranges shown on page 29. Enter your scoring range for each section on the scoresheet: Smart Growth (SG) In Transition (IT) Needs Your Attention! (NYA!) Add up your total score and select the corresponding range to rate your community's capacity to foster smart growth. 4 Introducing the Colorado Smart Growth Why a Colorado Growth Smart Card? definitions of smart growth is the underlying belief that growth should serve more than a real estate pro forma. Although there is clearly interest in Smart Growth at Over the past decades, architects, politicians, health the state or local level, there is no clear agreement on officials, and investors have come to realize that how what constitutes Smart Growth in Colorado. There are communities grow is a critically important question for also limited tools to help communities assess how well the long term health our environment and the wealth of they are prepared for the pressure of growth and their our communities. options to shape it. Finally, despite the current economic Smart Growth encapsulates the qualities that make slow down, Colorado, with its communities great places to live – spectacular landscapes and thriving thriving downtowns, vibrant public communities is projected to continue spaces, distinctive architecture, healthy to grow over the next 20 years. natural environments – and give them a Given the importance of growth and unique sense of place. The pattern of development in our communities, our The sum total of all real growth and development over the last aim is to provide your community – estate development -- plus century, often referred to as sprawl, whether it is small or large, rural or “ threatens these qualities in many urban, town or county – with a simple, communities making them look much clear, user-friendly means of assessing capital improvements in like the other. This sprawling, cookie- how well your community is prepared cutter pattern of development has also to take full advantage of the growth it roads, schools, and other resulted in clogged highways, isolated will experience. Growth itself is residential subdivisions, sedentary neither positive nor negative; it is public sector activities -- lifestyles, and inequitable investment to simply a process of change. A key the detriment of urban areas and question for the future of our state and quite literally shapes our downtowns across the country. our communities is whether we can world. shape growth in ways that results in -- William Fulton vibrant communities, strong How Can We Encourage Smart Growth economies, and a healthy environment or whether we will be consumed by The human designed world outside our the pressures growth can place on our windows didn’t just happen by accident. roadways, schools, and natural assets. The quality of life In most cases, the roads, houses, and malls were planned in Colorado hangs on how we answer this question. for and required by community codes. Although many factors contribute to sprawling land use patterns ” (including land costs, public infrastructure decisions, What’s Smart Growth? national chain stores and tax policy), a key component is the rules communities apply to new development. So many groups and people have tried to define Smart Unfortunately, sprawl is written into our codes and Growth that the term is in jeopardy of becoming regulations to varying degrees depending on your meaningless. But what connects just about all the community. 5 Scorecard The first vital step in encouraging smart growth is to development to check your own and other people’s assess where you are now. How do key factors combine assumptions about what your community is and is not in your community? What do your codes require? If you doing and what policies it may or may not have want to work for smart growth, where should you start? concerning growth and development (and even how This is where the Colorado Smart Growth Scorecard effective the policies might be!). Given the results of can help. Our aim is not to be negative or critical, or your small group discussion, you might be able to use place communities in competition for the "best score." the scorecard as part of more formal evaluation or Instead we hope this tool will help your community update of your community comprehensive / master assess its readiness for smart growth in a realistic, plan. specific, revealing way. We also hope that using this tool •As part of a formal will help you engage evaluation of your members of your community community plan. in discussions about shaping You can use the scorecard your community’s future. in the comprehensive planning process. How Does the Scorecard Work Community planning efforts can be challenging and How Can You Use It? given the varying levels of expertise on planning The Colorado Smart Growth issues in a community. The Scorecard is a community scorecard can be a way to self-assessment tool that can bring participants in the help spur discussion and planning process to a basic action on your community’s level of understanding of approach to growth and how their community development issues. You can encourages, manages, and use it in a number of different ways. Such as: shapes growth. How To Get Started • As a concerned community member. You can use the scorecard to as an educational tool Here are a number of thoughts on getting started. to better understand your community’s strengths and weaknesses in promoting smart growth. Individually • To keep the Scorecard pages clean for future use, answering the questions in the scorecard could also make copies of the scoresheet/scoring range sheet at be the starting point for discussions with other the end of the booklet. Use this sheet, and/or invite members of your community. others to use it, to note and tabulate answers. • In small group discussions or workshops. • Feel free to work on individual sections in any order You can use the scorecard in small group discussion your wish. The scorecard is a discussion tool on on your community’s approach to growth and smart growth. Although smart growth has many 6 components, you can work on individual sections that Characterizations of Smart Growth interest you the most to assess whether your community is taking a smart growth approach to that issue. You also don’t have to complete the scorecard Urban Land Institute: Smart growth does not • in one sitting. As a discussion tool, the value in using seek to stop or limit growth, but rather to the scorecard is not the absolute score, but the accommodate it in a way that enhances the discussion that results from assessing your community’s economy, protects the environment and approach to growth.