Where and how we build our communities is critical to increasing our quality of life, boosting equity, and protecting the environment. Smart growth promotes dense development in our cities, towns, and more compact neighborhoods in order to foster walkable, mixed-use, transit-accessible communities. By encouraging housing close to jobs, retail, and services and promoting streets designed for safe walking and biking we can help Virginians reduce their driving and the resultant pollution. Compact, well-connected communities also protect our natural and historic resources from sprawl, and remove car ownership as a financial burden and societal barrier. Current state policies too often fuel car-centric development, but reforming those policies to promote smart growth will bring environmental, health, and economic benefits to all Virginians.

Wyatt Gordon

DECARBONIZING VIRGINIA’S INDUSTRIAL POLLUTION WITH LOW-CARBON CONCRETE
TRANSFORMING TRANSPORTATION
BOOSTING SMART GROWTH

• Fund key water quality programs at levels consistent with achieving the goals of the Watershed Implementation Plan (see chapter Meeting Our Chesapeake Bay Clean-Up Goals, p. 1).
• Fund land conservation programs (see Healthy, Resilient Communities and Landscapes, p. 88).
• Increase funding for key state environmental agencies to levels adequate with programmatic needs, including programs to address resiliency and climate change needs.
• Fund and ensure rapid and thorough integration of environmental justice mandates. See additional recommendations in Working Towards Environmental Justice (p. 118).
• Ensure Virginia’s natural resources programs are adequately and reliably funded going forward by adopting dedicated funding mechanisms, such as application of the full statewide recordation fee revenue (see Exploring Dedicated Funding for Conservation, p. 94).

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Check back in January for talking points for the 2022 General Assembly Session.