Which cities have gone furthest to embrace smart-growth principles?
There’s been a lot of talk about Chicago, for instance, which OnEarth will be covering in one of its future issues. Benfield: It’s difficult to rate cities per se on smart growth, because the issues that smart growth seeks to address require regional, not municipal, approaches. (http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/its_time_to_adjust_to_the_new.html) Unfortunately Chicago’s heralded Climate Plan is completely silent on the point, as I wrote last fall (http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/linking_the_chicago_climate_pl.html) Metro Chicago does have a good plan, but I don’t know that there’s much authority behind it. Elsewhere in North America the best I have seen was done by the government of Ontario for the region around Toronto: a real plan with legal clout based entirely on smart growth principles (http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/bestlaid_plans_ontario_gets_it.html) Portland, Oregon, Sacramento, and the Twin Cities are other good examples where regions have
