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Building a Progressive Majority in the States:
Smart Growth and Clean Jobs

A cornerstone of progressive policy should be a program to create jobs based on clean energy and to promote smart growth in our communities. Rising gas prices, fears of increasing involvement in unstable Middle East politics, and a public desire to protect the environment all reinforce the appeal of an energy independence policy built on switching our economy to an innovative policy of alternative energy sources, energy efficiency and decreasing wasteful sprawl through better transit and housing development policies. Investing in these strategies will not only make America safer and more secure, it will create hundreds of thousands of jobs in communities across the country.

Wasteful energy and development policies have created an environmentally destructive cycle of urban sprawl, long commutes and the fragmentation of community life. Over the last few decades, rightwing activists promoted the myth that a strong environment and good jobs were incompatible -- a strategic tool to pit key progressive constituencies against each other. The result of this divisive strategy was the ascendance of a rightwing politics that undermined both wage standards and environmental planning, while creating racial and economic segregation between emerging exurbs and older urban communities. But new progressive alliances are beginning to promote an alternative vision of uniting our communities around a smart growth and clean jobs vision.

By encouraging energy independence, smart growth and clean jobs policies not only protect the environment and our national security, but are tremendous job creators for our communities. It makes logical sense to voters that, instead of shipping wealth overseas to foreign oil producers, the same money could be better spent creating jobs at home. The job creation potential of shifting away from foreign oil sources includes research and manufacturing jobs in alternative domestic energy industries, such as wind, solar, and biofuels; new construction jobs as we rehab buildings for energy efficiency; new work in better transit systems; and new jobs in manufacturing and services industries reengineered for energy efficiency.

Smart growth and clean jobs policies are already serving to create broad-based coalitions and unite different communities. Unions and environmentalists that had often been in conflict in the past have signed up together in initiatives like the Apollo Alliance around these issues. Fishermen and hunters in states like Montana have lined up with conservationists against rightwing property rights activists to defend outdoor areas and expand access to streams and open space. And inner city parents fighting to replace dirty buses inducing asthma in their kids are increasingly allied with suburban voters campaigning to restrain sprawl and create better suburban transit options.

Politically, these programs are wildly popular with voters and help progressives reach many of the swing voters most up for grabs politically. Polling by the Apollo Alliance shows over 70 percent of Americans support a drastic increase in government spending on renewable energy and other programs to move towards energy independence. 87 percent of the public see policies to invest in alternative energy sources as a good way to reduce global warming. And swing voters are more excited about such policies than any other demographic group. Similarly, as the Michigan Land Institute has highlighted, the same exurban districts that had traditionally elected rightwing legislators have lately been voting in local referendum to raise taxes to finance smart growth initiatives and are increasingly electing more progressive leaders to deal with transit and sprawl problems. A good example is the recent election of Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, who attributes his election victory in 2005 substantially to the strong support he received from emerging suburbs like Loudon County whose residents were attracted to his smart growth proposals.

Key Smart Growth and Clean Jobs Policies:

Smart Growth Development States are taking leadership in smarter development to improve community life, cut energy use, and preserve remaining rural and unspoiled areas with policies that:

• Promote Better Local Planning: States are increasingly requiring local governments to develop plans that encourage high-density, contiguous development, promote agricultural, forest and wildlife preservation, and that create incentives to use private undeveloped areas for recreational use.
• Encourage Transit-Oriented Development: Development funds should encourage residential, industrial and commercial development in near transit hubs and in existing urban areas and first-ring suburbs rather than greenfields.
• Create Affordable Infill Housing: Since exurban sprawl is often driven by high housing costs in metropolitan centers, tools like inclusionary zoning, brownfields restoration, and reclaiming vacant properties create more affordable infill development in urban and inner ring suburban areas.
• Incorporate Broadband Deployment into Planning: Encourage public investment and ownership of municipal broadband networks to reinforce transit and housing development planning.

Fuel-Efficient Transportation: Cars clogging congested highways are a root cause of the US dependence on foreign oil, so states have been taking leadership in policies to cut energy use in our transit systems, including policies to:

• Improve Transit Options: States can increase job access and transportation choice by targeting federal and state transportation dollars to effective regional transit networks such as regional high-speed rail, dedicated bus lanes, local rail transit, and bicycle paths.
• Promote Low Emission, Fuel-Efficient Cars: States can help create new markets for fuel efficient vehicles by upgrading state-owned fleets, providing incentives to use hybrid and more efficient cars, and developing a statewide infrastructure for alternative vehicle refueling.
• Fix Transit Infrastructure: By prioritizing fixing existing infrastructure before new highway construction, states lower motorist repair and injury costs and speed transit in existing areas.

Green Buildings: Energy use by buildings outstrips even energy consumed in transit, so states are increasingly encouraging more energy-efficient building design policies such as:

• Energy-Efficient Public Buildings: By setting green building standards for all public and publicly-financed buildings, states can save both energy and money.
• Tax Incentives and Revised Building Codes: Incentives for retrofits to manufacturing plants and updates to state building codes can decrease future energy use in private construction.
• Appliance Efficiency Standards: States can drive production of a new generation of household and manufacturing goods by applying tighter appliance efficiency standards to a broader range of products than is currently covered by federal standards.
• "Smart" Buildings: Incentives should encourage use of technology to monitor and conserve building energy use and use such monitoring to better coordinate demands on the energy grid.

Energy Supply Alternatives: Policy innovations to diversify energy sources and link clean energy and jobs include:

• Sun, Wind and Bio-Based Power: States have helped create markets for renewable energy through renewable portfolio standards for energy producers, tighter environmental standards, and tax credit incentives for renewable energy production.
• Clean Energy Funding: Through public bonds, pension funds, state-managed investment pools and leveraging federal dollars, states can direct investment dollars into alternative energy production and new technologies.
• Upgrade Energy Infrastructure: Make existing power plants as clean as possible, and discourage plants using older, dirtier technology. Adopt interconnection and net metering standards to encourage renewable energy production by a diverse range of in-state producers.