From Urban Land writer Kaid Benfield: "Those of us who are advocates of smart growth often make our case with numbers: amounts of pollution avoided, dollars saved in infrastructure expenses, acres of land conserved, and so on. Our opponents don’t do that. They appeal to emotion: do you really want, they ask the public, to live in or amidst tall buildings?
"What if we produce urban density that saves land and reduces carbon emissions, but overwhelms people with its scale and looks mediocre? I’ve argued that so-called smart growth shouldn’t be considered smart if it doesn’t include green buildings and green infrastructure, if it doesn’t show respect to our historic buildings and local culture, if it doesn’t foster public health, if it isn’t equitable.
"Our communities of the future must not only reduce carbon emissions, save land, and encourage use of transit, walking and bicycling. They must be significantly more dense than sprawl, but also sometimes forego additional increments of density in order to maintain light, limit noise, provide privacy, and respect a human scale." Full article here.