Newest Resources

Local Policies for Children's Health and Success. Better policies can create communities where children thrive.
U.S. children now have shorter lifespans and less economic mobility than in most peer countries. These poor outcomes result in part from community design factors that reduce physical activity, safety, environmental quality, affordability, access to opportunities and community cohesion. New research improves our understanding of these effects. This analysis indicates that children tend to be healthier and more successful growing up in compact urban neighborhoods than in auto-dependent suburbs.

VMT as a Metric of Sustainability: Why and How to Implement Vehicle Travel Reduction Targets.
This ITE Journal (July 2024) article by Todd Litman, Ousama Shebeeb and Ronald T. Milam describes the shift from mobility-based to accessibility-based planning, which strives to minimize the amount of travel needed to access services and activities.

Urban Village Planning for Community Livability: Guidance for Creating Complete Walkable Neighborhoods to Maximize Health, Wealth and Happiness.
Urban villages are compact, walkable neighborhoods where commonly-used services and activities are easy to access by non-auto modes. Urban village planning defines the number of people and jobs, and types of services and amenities that should be located within a walkshed, the area that people will walk for local errands. By reducing land consumption, improving accessibility and reducing motor vehicle travel, urban villages provide many livability benefits including affordability, inclusivity, social equity, public health and safety, community cohesion, local environmental quality and economic development. This report identifies specific urban village planning practices and performance targets.

A Business Case for Improving Interregional Bus Services
Interregional bus service quality is poor and declining in North America. This is unfair and inefficient. Inadequate public transport deprives non-drivers of independent mobility and therefore economic opportunities and dignity, forces drivers to spend time and money chauffeuring non-drivers, reduces rural economic development, and increases traffic problems. This study examines the costs and benefits of improving interregional bus services. It concludes that there is a strong business case for providing basic service on major travel corridors and high-quality service on congested highways.

Understanding Smart Growth Savings: Evaluating the Savings and Benefits of Compact Development
Smart Growth policies create compact, multimodal communities where residents consume less land, drive less and rely more on non-auto modes. This provides various economic, social and environmental benefits. Surveys indicate that many households would prefer to live in Smart Growth neighborhoods but cannot due to inadequate supply. This study indicates that Smart Growth provides larger and more diverse benefits than conventional planning recognizes, so more comprehensive analysis tends to justify more Smart Growth policies. It concludes that to be efficient and equitable, public policies should ensure that anybody, particularly physically, economically and socially disadvantaged groups, should be able to find suitable housing in Smart Growth neighborhoods.

Cool Walkability Planning: Providing Pedestrian Thermal Comfort in Hot Climate Cities, published in the Journal of Civil Engineering and Environmental Sciences.
Global warming and urbanization are increasing the number of people living in cities that experience extreme heat. This makes walking uncomfortable, unattractive and unhealthy, and causes travelers to drive for trips that could be made on foot. To address these problems hot-climate cities can create networks of shadeways (shaded sidewalks) and pedways (enclosed, climate-controlled walkways). This article introduces the Cool Walkshed Index (CWI) which rates pedestrian thermal protection from A (best) to F (worst). Analysis in this study indicates that the additional costs of these facilities can be repaid many times over through road, parking, and vehicle savings, and increased local property values.

Parking Requirement Impacts on Housing Affordability
Most jurisdictions have off-street parking requirements that increase motorists' convenience but reduce housing affordability. This study investigates the benefits and costs of these requirements, and identifies ways to make them more efficient and equitable. Reforms can typically reduce the costs of basic, lower-priced housing by 10-20%, and provide additional savings and benefits by increasing affordable housing in high-opportunity multimodal neighborhoods.

Transportation Planning Principles, Distortions and Reforms: Guidance for Reducing Automobile Dependency and Sprawl
Automobile dependency and sprawl create communities where it is easy to drive but difficult to get around by other modes. This is unfair to non-drivers and increases many costs. This report investigates the roots of these problems: planning distortions that favor driving over other modes and dispersion over compact development. This study identifies common planning practices that violate these principles, evaluates their impacts, and recommends reforms for efficiency and equity. It indicates that given better options and incentives travellers would drive less, rely more on non-auto modes, save money, and be better off overall as a result.

Completing Sidewalk Networks: Benefits and Costs
This study examines the benefits and costs of completing urban sidewalk networks. Most communities have incomplete networks. This is unfair to people who want to walk, and increases various costs by suppressing non-auto travel and increasing motor vehicle traffic. Typical North American communities currently spend $30 to $60 annually per capita on sidewalks, and would need to double or triple these levels to complete their networks.