Integration of Smart Growth into Comprehensive Planning
This Toolkit provides easy access to information on twelve different planning, zoning and subdivision techniques that will make smart growth a reality in your community. The materials are designed to increase understanding of smart growth tools and how to customize the techniques to local circumstances. The commonwealth encourages communities to pass and implement these smart growth measures.
Planning - the importance of context to successful implementation of smart growth

Successful implementation of these measures will require planning. Adoption of any of the 12 techniques included here will require customization, and communities should never simply copy and use model bylaws, either those provided here or elsewhere, without modifications to address circumstances within the community. Ideally, users of this toolkit will take a comprehensive approach to achieving smart growth. At a minimum, once a decision has been made to pursue implementation of a particular technique, such as open space residential design, community meetings will be needed to answer basic questions and how the model provided should be customized.
Interactive Case Study Map

Municipalities will need to make choices in implementing any of these techniques, including the part of the community covered, the mix of uses, and the appropriate permitting mechanism. To ensure that choices are made on the basis of good information, communities are encouraged to plan in advance of implementing any of these techniques. As a two-thirds vote at town meeting or by city council will be required for zoning approval, understanding or arriving at a consensus about community objectives and planning techniques is important. Master, community development, open space, housing, transportation, capital facilities, and other types of plans all provide a foundation for each consensus. The public process associated with planning greatly increases the odds of adoption.
Comprehensive Smart Growth Planning
in the Urban Setting

Achieving Smart Growth on the Community Scale

An important point communities utilizing this Toolkit should have in mind is that smart growth is unlikely to be accomplished via the passage and implementation of a single technique. While each technique in this Toolkit will achieve certain important goals, and move a community in the direction of smart growth, a more comprehensive approach is likely to be necessary. Another reason to plan in advance of implementing the measures included in the toolkit is to determine a mix of techniques necessary to achieve municipal smart growth goals. Included below are several typical scenarios illustrating that realizing smart growth often involves a long-term and multi-faceted campaign to realize a community's smart growth vision.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts offers several incentives to integrate smart growth planning and site design. The Commonwealth Capital Fund provides financial incentives for communities that adopt smart growth principles. New state legislation, MGL Chapter 40R, provides incentive payments when “smart growth zoning districts” are adopted and, again, when building permits are issued. Assistance is awarded from the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, Smart Growth Technique Assistance Grant Program to draft new land use regulations. Additionally, a $30 million bond for Transit-Oriented Development will provide grants and loans for parking, pedestrian, bicycle, and housing projects within one-quarter mile of public transit facilities.
Comprehensive Smart Growth Planning
in the Rural Setting