Have Smart Growth Advocates Made Progress Here In Mesa?

Blog post

The Smart Growth Movement: A (Partial) Success

. . . Has the smart growth movement succeeded?

It depends how you measure "success."

Michael Lewyn | December 27, 2016, 9am PST

Another blogger,  Michael Lewyn, recently had an email conversation with someone, arguing about whether the smart growth movement has been successful. 
His correspondent points out that millions of people still are perfectly happy with suburbia, and thus suggests that sprawl is as dominant now as it was in the 1990s.
This discussion made him think: how does one define a movement’s success or failure anyhow?
Obviously, the smart growth movement has not been a success if "success" means turning the clock all the way back to pre-sprawl America (say, 1945).
But that seems to him like a rather utopian objective.
A better question is: have smart growth advocates made progress?
So for example, one smart growth goal might be repopulating older urban cores.
For this goal alone, one could define "success" in a variety of different ways.
For example:
*Are cities gaining population?
*Are neighborhoods closest to downtown gaining population?
*Are city neighborhoods gaining people who can afford to live elsewhere?
*Are cities gaining population as fast as suburbs?

Read what he has to say here
Comments about Mesa can be made in the comment space below