Smart growth principles and the management of urban sprawl

Employing a policy communities framework to compare implementation efforts among a set of cities, this study seeks to answer the question: do public policies advocated by the Smart Growth Network, a coalition of organizations promoting a specific policy agenda, provide cities with policy initiatives, guidance, and tools that manage urban sprawl. In other words, do policy advocacy coalitions promote policies that actually manage sprawl? The authors, using two studies that ranked metropolitan areas using indexes that measured changes in sprawl, collected and analyzed planning documents and other public policy initiatives from four moderately sized, Midwestern, metropolitan statistical areas: Omaha, Nebraska; Davenport, Iowa; Wichita, Kansas; and Springfield, Missouri. They found that specific policy strategies consistent with Smart Growth were important to managing sprawl, but also important is the overall implementation philosophies of the cities toward growth management.