Title: What’s to Become of Small Towns? | RRM
Headings: What’s to Become of Small Towns?
What’s to Become of Small Towns?
Acting Regionally
Plan Locally

Content: To effectively accomplish compact growth, community edges should be clearly defined. These can be natural or manmade but must be defensible from a policy perspective and then implemented thoughtfully. For example, the City of Turlock (in the Central Valley of California) chose a road and irrigation canal along their northern border as the edge, providing an obvious physical demarcation as well as the opportunity to buffer the adjoining agricultural properties to the north. This buffer also became an important element of the city’s trail system. An additional suggestion for planning compact growth is to avoid segmenting new growth into isolated neighborhoods, and instead integrate new growth into the existing urban form. Once boundaries have been set, review existing zoning and land use plans to ensure there is adequate diversity and density in neighborhoods. Where possible, introduce mixed use to promote diversity while allowing flexibility to respond to market forces. Connectivity
As a means of integrating new growth and ensuring high-quality mobility for new neighborhoods, the street system should be an open street-block network. Traffic can be managed through traffic calming methods while maintaining an open system. It’s also suggested that small towns make the development of bicycle and pedestrian trails a high priority.