Overview

"If you build it, they will come" is more than a famous line from a popular movie; it also captures the dynamic interaction between transportation and land use. Build a new road and development often follows, bringing additional vehicular traffic that quickly generates a need for yet more capacity. Likewise, as developers build new communities beyond existing neighborhoods, it doesn't take long for new residents to start complaining about traffic congestion and slow commutes, which often translates into a demand for additional roads. This interconnectivity between transportation and land use has long been documented but rarely leads to comprehensive transportation and land use planning since both fields must attend to specific, unique objectives and usually are addressed at different levels of government. Lack of coordination often has led to an ever-increasing rate of land consumption, a loss of green space, rapidly rising infrastructure costs, and an increase in vehicle miles traveled, congestion, and air pollution.

Focus of Center Activities

The NGA Center provides assistance to Governors' offices on numerous issues related to transportation and land use: planning strategies, fix-it-first strategies, context sensitive design, sprawl mitigation, community development and design, active living, and air quality. The Center provides states with written materials, forums for sharing information, and tailored technical assistance on these issues and more. Please contact the NGA staff listed on this page for more information.

The Center's most comprehensive projects to date was a Policy Academy on Integrating Land Use and Transportation that was held in 2002-3. In an effort to encourage better integration of planning, the Center--with funding from the EPA, the FHWA, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation--selected six states through a competitive process to participate in the Policy Academy. The states chosen were: Illinois, Missouri, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Utah. Click here for further information about the Policy Academy.