Politics & Government

Gwinnett to Receive Smart Growth Assistance

A workshop will focus on planning for economic and fiscal health.

Smart Growth America has selected Gwinnett County as one of 15 to receive free technical assistance, it announced last week. The program, which includes a workshop that will be held in Gwinnett sometime in 2012, was made possible from a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency. 

“Gwinnett County has experienced rapid population growth,” said Roger Millar, Director of Smart Growth America. “It is subject to sprawl and the infrastructure is ageing.”

He said that in addition to seeing this need in Gwinnett, his organization selected Gwinnett County because of the engagement they saw in the application—both on a leadership level and with the public. “The elected leadership was aware of the application and supportive,” sais Millar, “And we were happy with the public engagement process they proposed.”

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Over 90 applications were received from 34 states plus the District of Columbia. Smart Growth America has 12 “ready-to-go” tools that they offer and Gwinnett County chose to apply for the “planning for economic and fiscal health tool.” 

Millar said the technical assistance, while obviously still in its nascent phase, would likely use publicly available information to analyze what kind of growth is happening in Gwinnett and what is possible.

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“We want to look at it in a new way,” said Millar. “We want to give folks a new vocabulary.” He uses the example of a large mall versus a small downtown shop. The conventional wisdom might be that a mall brings in more money and has a bigger impact on the economy, but the downtown shop might be smarter to encourage, might add more to the economy on a square-foot basis. 

A day to two-day long workshop will be held Gwinnett that gathers stakeholders, which could be everyone from elected officials to regular homeowners, to meet with Smart Growth experts. Millar said that Smart Growth America is working with the county now to nail down the details, but the event could be held sometime in the spring. 


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