The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the Department of Transportation (DOT) have banded together on an Interagency Partnership for Sustainable Communities. The goal of this initiative is to provide integrated planning and investment for smart growth.

This effort defines a set of “livability principles” that can be applied to all future projects. These principles include a variety of transportation choices, affordable housing, economic competitiveness, support for existing communities, encouraging locally generated renewable energy, and valuing communities and neighborhoods. The partnership plans to develop livability measures, information platforms and analytic tools that will evaluate a community’s progress toward their goals, as well as a means to provide incentives for communities that implement these new government guidelines.

A wealth of resources, including the partnership agreement, and a more detailed outline of livability principles can be found online here.

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