Learn more about the National Center for Smart Growth's primary content focus areas through the links below.
Community Development
NCSG’s Community Development team aims to measurably improve the conditions in disadvantaged communities, particularly in the Washington-Baltimore region. Our work focuses on a range of issues that impact the health and well-being of low-income, minority, and other marginalized groups, including affordable housing, economic and workforce development, segregation, gentrification, and neighborhood opportunity. Our strengths lie in data analysis and mapping as well as partnering with communities to help make the case for equitable urban investments and policies. Learn more...
Creative Placemaking
The Maryland Creative Placemaking Collaborative (MCPC) seeks to weave the independent activities of stakeholders, practitioners, and institutions into a collaborative, unified effort to strengthen communities. MCPC leverages the unique expertise of the University of Maryland—including programs in the arts, urban planning and transportation, and public policy—to confront issues including loss of cultural heritage, climate change, gentrification, unequal economic development and lack of public safety. Learn more...
International Planning
Although the NCSG does not have a formal international program or programs focused on countries other than the United States, NCSG staff are actively engaged in planning and urban management issues around the world. Gerrit Knaap, NCSG director, continues to conduct research on planning systems in Europe. Following his sabbatical at the University College, Dublin, (UCD) Gerrit coedited the book, Planning for States and Nation-States, which examined the performance of regional planning in Europe and the United States. As a continuing visiting member of the UCD faculty, Gerrit is currently working with European colleagues on a comparative analysis of territorial governance and spatial planning systems in Europe. Learn more...
Land Use
Maryland’s long tradition of leading-edge land use policy is the backdrop for our work in this focus area. Our research and publications assess the effects of these smart growth practices at the statewide, regional and local scales. Our projects apply this knowledge to new ways of approaching land use and its multiple interactions with other urban systems. Thus our work in transportation, economic development, equity, the environment, climate change and energy is informed and often driven by imagining alternative land use scenarios. The drivers for such scenarios and their outcomes are developed and analyzed in models. Learn more...
Transportation
The NCSG’s Transportation focus area investigates solutions to complex problems raised by the interactions of transportation and land use. Working with state and local officials, the transportation faculty and staff develop and apply analytic methods to better understand the complex relationships between transportation, land use, and economic development. Issues that the NCSG typically addresses include exploring methods of congestion relief, the use of multi-modal alternatives to reduce automobile dependency and congestion, how transportation influences economic development and the impact of alternative land use patterns on the transportation system. Learn more...