Leadership Clarksville Guiding our Growth - City of Clarksville

10
What Should Our
Growth Plan Look Like?
A growth plan should be a proactive plan for our community that will help our citizens and our governmental bodies
handle the rapid growth that Clarksville is currently experiencing.
It should include existing and future planning for:
• Better use of green space
• Greater availability of mass transit
• More tight-knit family friendly communities
• Walking & bike trails – Greenways Master Plan
• Parks
• Easier access to schools & retail
• Road & Infrastructure planning
• Protection of our rural communities and local farms
• A relationship of commercial, industrial and residential
zones
It would be a coordinated-county wide plan that contains a vision for our community. Projects like Rails to Trails
are a step in the right direction. Rails-to-Trails is a project that will include walking, jogging, and biking trails that
extends 3.6 miles from Riverfront Park to Pollard Road. Clarksville needs to continue to build upon successes like
these. It can be done by updating local zoning regulations and by involving the community and educating them on
the benefits of programs like Rails to Trails. One of the obstacles that the Rails to Trails project have overcome is
that it has largely been done in a reactive manner. The project leaders have had to back track to acquire the land
needed to piece together the trail.
Reactive is also the way to describe the process that is used to build new schools in Montgomery County. Schools
are constantly being built to meet the needs of our ever growing student population. Land development should be
done with education in mind. However, our government is being forced to pay retail prices for the land on which
they build schools. This continues to drive up building costs that are, in the long run, paid for by the taxpayers.
Clarksville, Montgomery County and its citizens can no longer afford to be reactive; it should turn its focus towards
being PROACTIVE. In order to do this, a comprehensive plan for our area needs to be developed using Smart
Growth principles.
What is Smart Growth?
Smart Growth is an urban planning and transportation theory that concentrates growth in pedestrian scale centers of
a city to avoid urban sprawl: and advocates compact, transit-oriented, walkable, bicycle-friendly land use, including
neighborhood schools, complete streets, and mixed-use development with a range of housing choices.
Smart Growth values long-range, regional considerations of sustainability over a short-term focus. Its goals are to
achieve a unique sense of community and place; expand the range of transportation, enable pedestrian friendly
options for citizens, employment, and housing choices; equitably distribute the costs and benefits of development;
preserve and enhance naturally and cultural resource; and promote public health (Wikipedia). Listed on the next
page are the 10 principles of Smart Growth and a brief explanation of how they work.