Smart Growth

How we build cities and towns has a profound effect on the causes and impacts of climate change. An essential strategy for reducing urban related carbon emissions is supporting dense, mixed-use communities and land uses that prioritize walking, biking or transit to meet daily transportation needs, as well as balancing jobs and housing within the region. If we make communities not only dense, but inclusive, then fewer people will have to drive till they qualify for housing financing, saving even more emissions. The benefits of sustainable development, also known as smart growth, include saving money for people, governments and businesses, improving public health, enhancing the quality of life, reducing carbon emissions and other pollution, and leaving more pastoral and natural lands in place.

We need to steer policymakers focus toward developing compact, walkable communities with a jobs and affordable housing balance that reduces our day-to-day carbon footprint.  As residential and commercial densities gradually increase, neighborhoods become more pedestrian friendly and visually appealing. It is important for these neighborhoods to be close to safe paths for bicycles and good-quality public transportation.

Check out Sierra Club’s Smart Growth Calculator - designed to offer a big picture perspective to decisions regarding growth!

The information on this page was taken from national Sierra Club’s policy priorities page. For more info visit their policy on urban land use.

Affordable Housing

The Sierra Club acknowledges that many national and local land use policies were designed to separate people by class and race, and that many planning, housing and development practices still reinforce those inequitable and racist outcomes. The Sierra Club believes affordable housing is a human right.

Further, all neighborhoods should be open to people of all income levels and backgrounds. In working to expand housing and economic opportunities we recognize our obligation to address past and ongoing inequity in the communities and neighborhoods most damaged by it and to fully engage the stakeholders of such communities in our work.

Equity in Planning

Land use policies and development often reflect and contribute to racial and economic bias. Decision-makers must actively engage all parts of the community to ensure diverse viewpoints are heard before decisions are made. Even more critical, they must ensure that the substance of land use decisions work to address past bias and inequity.