The Rise of Smart Growth: What It Is and Where It Came From

Mary Baker
Aug 17
7 min read

By Mary Baker, Published on August 17, 2025

PRESCOTT, AZ

What is Smart Growth?

Smart Growth is a 21st-century urban and regional planning framework that claims to balance environmental sustainability, economic opportunity, and social equity. Rooted in the United Nations’ Agenda 21 and its successor initiatives—including Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—Smart Growth operates from the premise that modern civilization faces dire global threats: climate change, social inequality, resource depletion, and urban sprawl.

In the United States, this ideology gained traction under the Obama administration through the Partnership for Sustainable Communities, a joint effort between HUD, the EPA, and DOT. The initiative introduced a set of “Smart Growth” principles that continue to guide state and local planning policies:

The three pillars of Sustainable Development: Environmental Justice, Social Justice, and Economic Justice. Image Adobe Stock.

Mix land uses
Take advantage of compact building design
Create a range of housing opportunities and choices
Create walkable neighborhoods
Foster distinctive, attractive communities with a strong sense of place
Preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty, and critical environmental areas
Strengthen and direct development toward existing communities
Provide a variety of transportation choices
Make development decisions predictable, fair, and cost-effective
Encourage community and stakeholder collaboration in development decisions

On the surface, Smart Growth promotes sustainability and quality of life—walkable neighborhoods, green spaces, public transit, and mixed-use developments. In practice, however, it advances an ideological framework that often seeks to reshape American lifestyles, especially the rural, exurban, and suburban preference for private property, personal vehicles, and low-density housing.

Today’s smart growth policies have become increasingly aggressive. With expanded state-level climate mandates, regional planning authorities, and federal grants tied to equity metrics, planners are empowered not only to “guide” development, but to override local autonomy and private property rights. Many residents are unaware that long-term land use strategies—including climate adaptation, 15-minute cities, infill mandates, and net-zero housing codes—are often adopted without meaningful public input.

Lay people or citizens, in general, have little interest or understanding of urban planning complexities or the role of the “city planner” in shaping our communities. The dual nature of planning is both a technical process and a political force. A planner must coordinate land use, infrastructure, environmental regulations, housing needs, and transportation—often under the influence of state and federal directives. This complex web rarely prioritizes individual choice or community-level values.

The Henry Lamb (deceased May 23, 2012), Executive V.P. of the Environmental Conservation Organization and Chairman of Sovereignty International, warned in 2012:

Local government planning should, first of all, protect the private property rights of its citizens. The legitimate function of local planning is to facilitate the safe and coordinated exercise of the free market in real estate and commerce.

Since then, however, the planning profession has shifted from a facilitator of community prosperity to a mechanism for top-down behavioral control. Smart Growth has evolved into a sophisticated tool of social engineering, where “equity,” “resilience,” and “sustainability” are the language of compliance rather than empowerment.

Though Smart Growth advocates insist that their processes are community-led, the reality is often the opposite. Federal grants, climate action plans, and environmental justice frameworks carry pre-baked outcomes and limited flexibility for public dissent. Many local governments now rubber-stamp “vision plans” shaped by outside consultants and international benchmarks, rather than citizen-driven priorities.

Henry Lamb accurately described this shift:

Social engineering […] is the result of professional planners creating a vision of what they think a community should be in the future. What the landowners may want is not a factor in the design. What the planners think the broader community will want, such as open space and protected wildlife areas, outweighs private property rights or what landowners may want.

As we move further into 2025, the question for local communities is no longer whether planning is necessary—but who controls the vision. Smart Growth, in its current form, raises important concerns about the erosion of property rights, the politicization of land use, and the future of individual liberty in the places we call home.

The Birth of Smart GrowthSustainable development was the forerunner to what we now call Smart Growth, and it remains the foundational global blueprint for transforming how people live, move, build, and govern in the 21st century.

The origin of this shift can be traced to 1992, when world leaders gathered at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Rio Earth Summit. It was there that Agenda 21—a sweeping international action plan—was introduced and endorsed by more than 178 governments, including the United States. President George H. W. Bush, representing the American people, pledged to support this new global compact, which aimed to address broad categories of "inequity" across social, economic, and environmental dimensions.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton followed up by signing Executive Order 12852, establishing the President’s Council on Sustainable Development. The Council collaborated with high-level industry leaders and policy influencers to turn the United Nations’ vision into actionable strategies for the U.S. domestic landscape. One of its key partnerships was with the American Planning Association (APA), which developed a comprehensive legislative guidebook titled "Growing Smart". This document—referred to by some as the new zoning bible—offered local governments policy templates, model legislation, and implementation tools to promote sustainability at the municipal and regional levels.

President George H. W. Bush speaking to the assembly at the United Nations Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992. Image by Getty Images.

President Clinton called for “bold, new approaches to achieve our economic, environmental, and equity goals,” and Sustainable America: A New Consensus became the guiding philosophy. The blueprint laid the groundwork for what would soon evolve into Smart Growth.

By the late 1990s, with increasing media coverage of suburban “sprawl,” Clinton and Vice President Al Gore introduced the Livability Agenda and the Lands Legacy Initiative. These programs packaged Smart Growth as a quality-of-life campaign, emphasizing the importance of preserving green space, reducing traffic congestion, and revitalizing urban centers. Federal grants, planning grants, and regulatory incentives soon followed, linking land use to new criteria: climate resilience, equity, biodiversity, and social cohesion.

In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN body created by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), declared that human activity was the primary driver of global warming. This report contributed to the new urgency for sustainable development and Smart Growth. While President George W. Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol, he did commission the National Research Council (NRC) to study the U.S. impacts of global warming. In his June 11, 2001, statement, Bush acknowledged the rise in greenhouse gases but advocated for voluntary market-based solutions and technological innovation rather than binding international mandates.

Smart Growth America News Card. Image by Smart Growth America.

Despite federal hesitancy at that time, states began adopting Smart Growth-style climate policies. For example, in 2006, California passed AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act, which established statewide targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This law became the model for many similar efforts across the country and linked climate targets with land use regulation.

The re-emergence of strong federal support came under the Obama Administration, when Smart Growth was incorporated into the broader Sustainable Communities Initiative, administered through HUD, the EPA, and DOT. This “whole-of-government” approach meant that federal agencies began integrating land use policy into climate adaptation, alternative housing, environmental justice, and transportation equity. Numerous non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as Smart Growth America, Sierra Club, and The Nature Conservancy became key players in shaping local planning strategies through technical assistance and grant partnerships. See the Yavapai County Comprehensive Plan.

Today in 2025, the vision that began with Agenda 21 has matured into Agenda 2030, the Green New Deal movement, and numerous state-level Climate Action Plans. Smart Growth is no longer simply a set of planning principles—it is a multi-agency governance framework driven by metrics, mandates, and model ordinances. With the rise of digital tracking, energy benchmarking, and "climate budgeting," local governments are now expected to align their general plans, zoning codes, and even building permits with carbon reduction goals set by global and national authorities.

While promoted as community-driven, the Smart Growth agenda is heavily top-down in practice. Stakeholder collaborations like the Quad Cities Climate Collaborative (QCCC), chaired by newly appointed City of Prescott Councilman Patrick Grady, often take the form of “managed consensus,” where planners and consultants frame the acceptable options, and dissenting voices are minimized. Under the banner of sustainability, Smart Growth has become a mechanism for deep structural change—social, economic, and political—with limited space for debate about property rights, individual preferences, or long-standing community character.

As we examine the rise of Smart Growth, it’s critical to understand its ideological origins, its policy enablers, and its implications for local self-governance.

Next in the Civic Awareness Series

From Vision to Dollars: The Political and Financial Engine Driving Smart Growth shows how America and specifically Arizona’s land use planning has been tied to global climate goals, from early executive orders to Governor Hobbs’ Office of Resiliency.

It follows the money from the Clinton-Gore “Livability Agenda” to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, revealing how federal grants and regional plans steer cities toward pre-set outcomes.

This installment continues to uncover how Smart Growth has evolved into a compliance system that shapes zoning, housing, and transportation—often at the expense of local control, property rights, and community identity.

RESOURCES

Partnership for Sustainable Communities

1992 United Nations

Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit

United Nations

Agenda 21 / Agenda 2030

United Nations

Sustainable Development Goals

Henry Lamb Columns

Renew America

Henry Lamb Exposes U.N. Global Neighborhood Plan and Video

American Planning Association Growing Smart Guidebook