That’s the conclusion of a new report from the Center for Clean Air Policy, titled “Growing Wealthier: Smart Growth, Climate Change and Prosperity.” The findings, released this morning, point to communities that have already improved quality of life and economic growth through increased transportation options and more efficient land use strategies.

The driving force is the pent-up demand for walkable communities better served by public transportation. For decades, the bulk of new housing has sprung up in suburban and exurban cul-de-sacs, accessible only by auto and often requiring long commutes to work and daily activities. Existing zoning, tax incentives and subsidies have heavily favored status-quo development, leaving more sustainable approaches at an unfair advantage.

Building farther and farther out — with the idea of giving more Americans access to a single-family lifestyle — was supposed to make our lives richer, literally and figuratively. But CCAP’s findings indicate otherwise. In fact, the communities that have created opportunities for people to live closer to where they work and utilize new travel options have seen remarkable progress. (This amplifies the Wall Street Journal story from last week about how Generation Y is less and less concerned with big yards and cul-de-sacs far from town than their parents. Could that be driving some of this change? Read that story here.)

In Dallas, Texas, for instance, downtown retail sales rose 33 percent the year after the new light rail system began operation. Portland, Oregon attracted $3.5 billion in private investment after just $100 million in streetcar funding. In Sarasota, Florida, downtown development costs clocked in at just half the cost of new development in the suburbs and generated four times the revenue in tax receipts.

Denver, Colorado perhaps best exemplifies the market for new approaches to growth and transit. Home values for Denver residents within a half-mile radius of the Southeast light rail line increased by 18 percent just as home values in the remainder of Denver declined by 18 percent, between 2006 and 2008. Nationwide, one study found that every one-point increase in a home’s “walk score” — a measure of how accessible the area is by foot — corresponded with a $700 to $3,000 increase in property value. As the report puts it:

The preponderance of the evidence leads us to conclude that smart-growth strategies can help communities, businesses and individuals make money, save money and enhance quality of life.

The TIGER grants program, which awards transportation projects that integrate environmental and economic innovation, is cited by CCAP as a starting point for federal reform. Expanding on the popularity of this important program is a good start toward a more merit-based and comprehensive approach to spending in the next surface transportation bill.

The report was authored by CCAP Transportation Analyst Chuck Kooshian and CCAP Director of Transportation Programs Steve Winkelman.

The Diane Rehm show, which regularly receives more than 2.1 million listeners on its home of Washington-based NPR affiliate WAMU, tackled the topic of “Creating Livable Cities” during last Thursday’s broadcast.

Rehm was also joined by, among others, Barbara McCann, the director of the National Complete Streets Coalition. McCann noted that 23 states and 137 local jurisdictions across the country have adopted Complete Streets policies to turn the tide on the outdated single-minded approach to road construction that meets the needs of only those behind the wheel.

Describing some of the roadblocks to making America’s streets accessible to all users, McCann said it “varies by city.”

In some places, it’s just a doubt that anyone will do anything other than drive in places where driving is the only way people generally get around. Many sunbelt cities that grew up only with the car. Other places there’s a real debate about who gets the road space and the allocation of space beyond the automobile. And in other places, they have questions about costs. But in every community that’s moving forward on this, they really embrace the vision of wanting to do things differently. They accept that it’s going to take awhile and then they start to reap the benefits.

On the political front, former Pittsburgh mayor Tom Murphy noted that too often “people are locked in the status quo.” Part of that status quo is embedded in decades-old zoning laws that strictly separate where people live, work and shop. Those rules — sprawling residential areas with auto-oriented commercial growth on the fringe — are the norm for many metropolitan areas, but “cities increasingly now are changing the rules,” Murphy noted, citing suburban Bethesda near Washington, D.C., as a “great example” and a “place where you can live, work and play and you got good transit.”

So where does this leave us politically, and how does the advocacy work of folks like the Complete Streets coalition tie in? Murphy said the Obama administration is “grappling” with these issues in the course of working through infrastructure legislation. At stake in the next transportation bill are the severely limited funds that do go toward biking and walking, with some groups wanting to direct all funding away from these projects.

The transportation lobby wants to take all that money back to build more roads. And so there’s a huge battle that goes on that really begins the drive the conversation all over the country.

Unfortunately for them, making streets safe and accessible for all users is popular from coast to coast in cities and towns of all sizes.

You can read the entire transcript or listen to the broadcast here.

There are many reasons smarter growth makes sense. By building more sustainably and closer to where people work and shop and plan, we reduce hours stuck in traffic and make it easier to reach life’s necessities.

But there is something even more important at stake: our health. According to new data from the American Lung Association in California, smart growth policies can prevent 140 premature deaths and 105,500 asthma attacks every year in that state. The figures resulted from looking at a proposed 2035 planning scenario for California that prioritized more compact and sustainable development with better transportation options.

Changing how we build and plan would also relieve our communities of $1.66 billion in public health costs. It would also prevent:

•    260 heart attacks
•    215 acute bronchitis incidents
•    95 cases of chronic bronchitis
•    2,370 asthma attacks
•    101,960 other respiratory symptoms
•    205 respiratory ER trips and hospitalizations
•    16,550 lost work days
•    132,190 tons of criteria pollutants

Chelsea Allinger discussed the link between smart growth and active living over at Smart Growth America:

Like many Americans, I grew up knowing only one type of community design — drivable suburbia. In my community, exercise wasn’t something that happened naturally over the course of the day. It required carving out designated time slots from a crowded schedule.

Frankly, that didn’t happen as often as it should.

Since that time, I’ve learned that cultivating a more active lifestyle doesn’t have to mean finding a 25th hour in the day. Moving to a walkable, mixed-use, smart growth community quite literally changed my life — with, as it turns out, more significant health benefits than I’d initially realized.

Here is Dr. Sonal Patel in Capitol Weekly, discussing why many of her colleagues in health care also see the connection:

Most California cities were designed to make it easy to drive and park cars. Homes were separated from stores, workplaces and other commercial activities. The unwitting result was sprawling cities that maximize the amount of miles we drive and the time we sit idling in traffic and that minimize healthier options like walking, biking or public transit.

In the past decade, California has been on the cutting-edge of efforts to build more sustainably and closer to transit. In 2008, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed SB 375, which required local communities to include greenhouse gas reduction targets in their land-use and transportation planning policies.

Check back each day for a new post and read the full series of livability case studies as they’re posted. The intro can be found here.

Davidson, North Carolina

Davidson faced a surge in population head-on by revitalizing its town center and improving transportation options, earning the 2004 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement from the U.S. EPA.

Davidson, North Carolina, a small community 20 miles from Charlotte, is noted for its small town identity and great neighborhoods. Davidson has seen a sharp hike in population since 2000, but by increasing transportation options and revitalizing Main Street, the town was able to preserve its character and community. Davidson was the 2004 recipient of a National Award for Smart Growth Achievement from the U.S. EPA.

The key to Davidson’s success, according to Town Planner Kris Krider, was connecting each new housing or commercial development with travel options and broadening the definition of how people move.

“Sitting in traffic is not one of the themes of livability that we think is valuable,” Krider said. “It could be a walking path. It could be bike paths. Connectivity is not just streets, it’s connecting people.”

Under current law, communities like Davidson that take a more comprehensive approach to transportation often get shut out of federal dollars. That is why Krider supports President Obama’s move to reward the efforts like the ones Davidson has pursued.

“To me, I have no problem with the government trying to look at the big picture,” Krider said. “Livability and smart growth are in the interest of everyone and we all have a responsibility to be involved.”

“I think the relationship between the DOT, HUD and EPA is a great way to start,” Krider added, citing the Partnership for Sustainable Communities that stresses collaboration between the three agencies. “I think it’s looking at things comprehensively. We don’t live in a world that’s just HUD and EPA, so the relationships between agencies in the federal government should mimic what towns are facing.”

Source: Environmental Protection Agency. Krider, Kris. Telephone Interview. Monday, March 19, 2010.

Our transportation investments and the built environment — what we build and where — have an enormous impact on our health and the cost of our health care.

With the debate over health care reform dominating the news daily, Transportation for America and coalition members from across the country took that powerful — yet often ignored or neglected — message to Capitol Hill leaders.

T4 America’s “health fly-in” last Friday connected health professionals and advocates from across the country with their Congressional representatives to highlight the impact that transportation has on our health and wellness.

T4 America kicked off the day with a briefing from campaign director James Corless and four other nationally recognized experts on health and transportation. Then, participants from across the country, from the Pacific Northwest to New England, split up and took the message to their representatives, visiting a total of 37 Congressional offices.

Among the 25 participants in the fly-in, six hailed from national groups and 19 from state and local organizations. Several, including fourteen-year-old childhood wellness advocate Julia Lopez and UCLA professor Dr. Richard Jackson, traveled all the way from California. (Look for a full list of organizations at the bottom of the post)

During the meetings, advocates discussed how the built environment — where we live, work and play — has a profound impact on obesity rates, diabetes, asthma and other quality of life measures. And they discussed policy prescriptions that can increase walkability, grow transit ridership and make physical activity a normal part of our daily routine.

“As a pediatrician and child advocate, my job is to do what I can to make sure as many kids as possible live healthy lives, and the biggest threats to them at this time are injuries — both violent and unintentional — and obesity,” said Dr. Katherine Kaufer Christoffel, a medical and research director at Northwestern University.

“This active transportation stuff really gets at all of those things.”

Dr. Joe Thompson, Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center to Prevent Childhood Obesity, participated as a briefing panelist but did not attend Congressional meetings. Thompson serves as the Surgeon General of the State of Arkansas, where an alarming 22 percent of children are obese and 40 percent are overweight. Thompson said the built environment is a critical component of America’s livelihood.

“If we don’t solve the upstream causes of health problems, we won’t be able to hold health care reform together,” he said.

207 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America

14 year-old health advocate Julia Lopez chats with attendees of the health fly-in after making a few remarks.

Noelle Dobson, Director of the Healthy Eating Active Living initiative at Portland’s Community Health Partnership, has been stressing the link between health and transportation through her work preparing health impact assessments for new development projects.

“This is all public health has ever been about for me,” she said.

T4 America and participating advocates were promoting three important pieces of legislation that address the health and transportation connection.

One is CLEAN-TEA, a Senate bill that would allocate ten percent of revenue from climate legislation toward clean transportation, walking and biking, and other modes that can help reduce emissions. The second is the National Transportation Objectives Act, which would create explicit, specific targets and benchmarks for the transportation bill, including goals like reducing CO2 from transportation by 40%, eliminating at-risk exposure to pollution, and tripling the amount of walking and biking we do.  Lastly is Complete Streets legislation to make our streets safe and  accommodating for all users and people — bus riders, bicyclists and pedestrians.

Most fly-in participants met with their representatives’ transportation staffers, but a few were able to meet face-to-face with the representatives themselves. Heidi Klein, a board member for the Vermont Public Health Association, got a few words in with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and two fly-in participants from Montana had the chance to meet their junior Senator, Democrat Jon Tester.

Other office visits included Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Sen. Max Baucus of Montana.

Our thanks to the many advocates and supporters who worked very hard to take this crucial message to Capitol Hill.

Participating organizations:

• National Recreation and Park Association
• National Coalition for Promoting Physical Activity
• Campaign to End Obesity
• American Public Health Association
• American Lung Association
• PolicyLink
• National Complete Streets Coalition
• Trust for America’s Health
• America Bikes
• Safe Routes to School
• State and Territorial Injury Prevention Directors Association (STIPDA)

WASHINGTON (February 26, 2009) — An overwhelming majority of Americans believe restoring existing roads and bridges and expanding transportation options should take precedence over building new roads, according to a survey sponsored by the National Association of Realtors® and Transportation for America.

The 2009 Growth and Transportation Survey describes what Americans think about how their communities are handling development and how the transportation needs of communities can best be met.

“Realtors® build communities and know how important an organized transportation structure is in supporting neighborhood growth,” said NAR President Charles McMillan, a broker with Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Dallas-Fort Worth. “A well planned investment in transportation will help create more livable and vibrant communities.”

To accommodate future U.S. population growth, which is expected to increase by 100 million by 2050, Americans favor improving intercity rail and transit, walking and biking over building new highways. When asked what the federal government’s top priority should be for 2009 transportation funding, half of all respondents recommended maintaining and repairing roads and bridges, while nearly one third said “expanding and improving bus, rail, and other public transportation.” Only 16 percent said “expanding and improving roads, highways, freeways and bridges.”

When asked about approaches to addressing traffic, 47 percent preferred improving public transportation, 25 percent chose building communities that encourage people not to drive, and 20 percent preferred building new roads. fifty-six percent of those surveyed believe the federal government is not devoting enough attention to trains and light rail systems, and three out of four favor improving intercity rail and transit.

The 2009 Growth and Transportation Survey was conducted by Hart Research Associates, January 5-7. Hart Research Associates telephoned 1,005 adults living in the U.S. The study has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

The National Association of Realtors®, “The Voice for Real Estate,” is America’s largest trade association, representing 1.2 million members involved in all aspects of the residential and commercial real estate industries.

Be sure to download the poll results linked above if you want to read the questions and results.