In May 2004, ECT released the Envision Central Texas Vision which paints a compelling portrait of what we would like life to be like in our central Texas regional community 20-40 years from today. In 2005, ECT transitioned from visioning to implementation with the creation of seven Implementation Committees, which are developing tools, resources and projects to help central Texas communities realize that preferred future. This on-line "quality growth implementation expert system," is a first tool in that toolkit. It builds upon the results of a 2003 research project commissioned by TXDOT to identify effective techniques that localities can use to implement quality growth in Texas (Paterson et al., 2003). The expert system helps communities identify effective, context sensitive quality growth implementation tools and techniques that can be used to promote such quality growth goals as:

1. Provide Transportation Choices: Provide a range of transportation choices beyond the automobile, including transit, walking, and bicycling. This goal is closely related to the goals of promoting social equity, promoting accessibility, and reducing auto vehicle miles traveled (VMT). Policies designed to manage the expansion of the urbanized area can also help to provide transportation choices.

2. Reduce Auto Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT): This goal is closely related to the goals of managing congestion and minimizing environmental impact. Policies designed to provide transportation choices can help to reduce auto VMT but do not guarantee that drivers will choose the alternatives. Policy actions that promote infill development also tend to create more multimodal land uses and reduce VMT.

3. Manage Congestion: Manage congestion in the road system without necessarily reducing vehicle travel. This goal is closely related to the goal of reducing auto VMT but emphasizes policies designed to shift travel out of peak periods.

4. Ensure Adequate Level of Service: Ensure that the road system provides an adequate level of service in terms of travel times and delays, traffic signal coordination, and that the transit system provides an adequate level of service in terms of frequencies and geographic coverage. It also entails the prevention of traffic spillover to neighborhood streets. This goal is closely related to the goals of managing congestion and providing transportation choices.

5. Promote Land-Use Accessibility: Promote accessibility to needed and desired services, including job centers, stores, medical services, parks, etc. This goal emphasizes policies that shape development patterns so that activities are closer together. Policies that promote accessibility also help to provide transportation choices by bringing activities within walking and bicycling distance. This goal is also related to the goals of promoting social equity and strengthening community livability.

6. Manage Expansion of Urbanized Area: Manage the expansion of the urbanized area so that land is used efficiently as population grows and scattered pockets of development are avoided. This goal is closely related to the goal of preserving natural resources and open space and to the goal of minimizing environmental impact. Managing the expansion of the urbanized area requires close coordination between land use and transportation planning.

7. Preserve Natural Resources and Open Space: Preserve natural resources and open spaces, including waterways, wildlife corridors, and plant and animal habitats for environmental, economic, and/or social purposes. This goal is closely related to the goal of minimizing environmental impact but focuses on impact on land rather than air quality or water quality. Policies that help to manage the expansion of the urbanized area usually help to preserve natural resources and open space.

8. Minimize Environmental Impact: Minimize the impact of transportation and development on the environment, particularly impact on air quality and water quality. Impact on wildlife habitats and open space is considered in the goal of preserving natural resources and open space. Policies that reduce auto VMT also help to minimize environmental impact.

9. Promote Economic Vitality: Promote the vitality of local economies, particularly in older communities and neighborhoods. This goal is related to the goals of strengthening community livability and promoting social equity.

10. Promote Social Equity: Promote social equity by ensuring that "transportation disadvantaged" populations, including low-income households, the elderly, and persons with disabilities, have adequate access to needed and desired activities and do not disproportionately bear the costs of transportation and land development. Policies that promote accessibility or reduce cross-subsidies from urban to suburban residents and provide transportation choices usually promote social equity. Policies that affect the price of transportation or land development may work for or against social equity.

11. Strengthen Community Livability: Strengthen community livability by enhancing quality of life environmentally, economically, and socially in existing neighborhoods. Policies that strengthen livability in existing communities help to manage the growth of the urbanized area. This goal is also related to the goal of promoting accessibility.

12. Strengthen Coordination: Strengthen coordination between agencies within a region, between agencies at different levels of government, between agencies with transportation and land-use responsibilities, between public agencies and the private and nonprofit sectors, and in order to achieve growth-management objectives. Strengthening coordination helps to facilitate the achievement of all other goals.

The expert system is a web-based series of interactive query pages that allow localities to consider an extensive range of land use and transportation quality growth tools and techniques (over 100 in total, click here to see the entire list) that encompass regulatory, land acquisition, infrastructure investment, market pricing, and planning related techniques to promote specific growth goals. Not all quality growth implementation tools and techniques are appropriate to all settings in Texas, therefore the web based expert system offers various criteria to help localities sort through the implementation tools to identify those that best match their particular context and need. For example, what works in a large or fast growing city may be less appropriate or useful in a slower or smaller city with less planning staff capacity and market demand for land. As another example, a locality may only want to consider well established and tested implementation tools and techniques rather then those that are still viewed as untested or experimental. Thus, in addition to these factors, the tools and techniques can be sorted through based on several other factors such as:

1. Whether the tool represents more of a planning vs. a market vs. regulatory or a capital investment approach to development management or transportation management.
2. The likely costliness to implement a tool or technique
3. The likely lead time to implement a tool or technique
4. The level of congestion on the road network
5. The socio-economic characteristics of the city population and its desired transportation service levels.
6. The planning culture of the community (e.g., a continuum of a free market laissez-faire approach to a strong acceptance of a more planning/regulatory framework)

Lastly, localities can explore implementation choices also based on our expert panel assessment of the effectiveness of the implementation tools and techniques based on the US experience to date.

How to Use the Quality Growth Expert System

As a first step, we highly recommend you create a user log-in so that you can retrieve saved searches at a future date. Once you have logged in, you are ready to use the expert system to explore the tools and techniques that can be used by your community to implement a desired quality growth goal. The first page of the expert system requires you to select a quality growth goal you're interested in implementing in your community (based on the list of 12 goals noted above). The next two pages of the expert system offer filters to limit the number of implementation tools to only those that best match your local context. The first page lists Local Suitability Characteristics so you can select implementation tools that match the local context of your community (e.g., rate of growth, city size and political culture). Once you have selected any desired local characteristic, click "Next" at the bottom of the screen. The next page lists certain policy characteristics that might best apply to your community's administrative culture, timeframe or openness to innovation. However, if you wish to maximize the range of implementation tools to implement a given quality growth goal - do not click any Local Suitability or Policy Characteristics and just click "Next" at the bottom of each page. When you click "Next" at the bottom of the Policy Characteristic page, the next screen is your search results. The "Search Results" page is a listing of all the tools and strategies that can be used directly or indirectly to implement your desired quality growth goal. That list can also be re-sorted based on its implementation effectiveness by clicking the "sort by" link at the top of the right hand column. Each tool listed on the "Search Results" page has a hypertext link to a resource page that briefly describes the implementation tool, offers links to on-line reports and studies where available, and offers brief synopses of the use of the implementation tool in Texas, the US or in some limited cases, abroad.

We envision two possible situations where central Texas communities might find the expert system useful for their ECT implementation purposes. The first is to facilitate the implementation of a new community plan or planning process. In this case, the toolkit basically helps a community to identify the full gamut of implementation choices for a given quality growth goal. The community can use the tool resource page links to find out whether the tool makes sense in their local context. A second possible application is for a community that is re-visiting the implementation progress of an existing community plan. In this case, the expert system might help a community understand why some implementation tools currently in use are underperforming (e.g., the expert system may show that one or more tools ranked low on effectiveness in our research) as well as offer suggestions for new implementation tools that hold greater promise (e.g., those that ranked higher in effectiveness in the search list). As a closing comment, it is important to note that the expert panel that helped create and rank these tools overwhelmingly noted that successful implementation of any quality growth goal is most likely to succeed where a system of complementary implementation tools are in place as opposed to a single implementation technique (Paterson et al, 2003). In a separate study by Wilson and Paterson (2003) that reviewed 32 Smart Growth exemplar programs across the US, the authors reported that the most successful Smart Growth communities were those that used multiple complementary implementation tools and techniques to accomplish desired goals and objectives.

We hope you find the expert system of great use in implementing the ECT vision in your community.

Project Team Members: PI - Dr. Robert G. Paterson, Associate Professor, Graduate Program in Community and Regional Planning, School of Architecture, The University of Texas at Austin; CO-PI Rachael Rawlins, Adjunct Faculty, Graduate Program in Community and Regional Planning, School of Architecture, The University of Texas at Austin; Dr. Chandra Bhat, Adnan Abou-Ayyash Centennial Professor in Transportation Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin

Sources:

Paterson, R., S. Handy, K. Kockelman, C.R. Bhat, J. Song, J. Rajamani, J. Jung, K. Banta, U. Desai, and J. Waleski, "Techniques for Mitigating Urban Sprawl," Report 4420-2, prepared for the Texas Department of Transportation, September 2003. PDF version

Wilson, Robert and Robert Paterson (eds). Innovative Initiatives in Growth Management & Open Space Preservation Policies, LBJ School of Public Affairs, Policy Research Project Report, University of Texas: LBJ School of Public Affairs, Monograph Number 149, 2003