By Ron Thaniel
July 13, 2009

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson announced on June 16 an interagency Partnership for Sustainable Communities to help improve access to affordable housing, more transportation options, and lower transportation costs while protecting the environment in communities nationwide.

Testifying together at a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee hearing, LaHood, Donovan and Jackson outlined the six guiding ‘livability principles’ they will use to coordinate federal transportation, environmental protection, and housing investments at their respective agencies.

Earlier this year, HUD and DOT announced an unprecedented agreement to implement joint housing and transportation initiatives. With EPA joining the partnership, the three agencies will work together to ensure that these housing and transportation goals are met while simultaneously protecting the environment, promoting equitable development, and helping to address the challenges of climate change.

The Partnership for Sustainable Communities established six livability principles that will act as a foundation for interagency coordination:

1. Provide more transportation choices. Develop safe, reliable and economical transportation choices to decrease household transportation costs, reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign oil, improve air quality, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote public health.

2. Promote equitable, affordable housing. Expand location- and energy-efficient housing choices for people of all ages, incomes, races and ethnicities to increase mobility and lower the combined cost of housing and transportation.

3. Enhance economic competitiveness. Improve economic competitiveness through reliable and timely access to employment centers, educational opportunities, services and other basic needs by workers as well as expanded business access to markets.

4. Support existing communities. Target federal funding toward existing communities – through such strategies as transit-oriented, mixed-use development and land recycling – to increase community revitalization, improve the efficiency of public works investments, and safeguard rural landscapes.

5. Coordinate policies and leverage investment. Align federal policies and funding to remove barriers to collaboration, leverage funding and increase the accountability and effectiveness of all levels of government to plan for future growth, including making smart energy choices such as locally generated renewable energy.

6. Value communities and neighborhoods. Enhance the unique characteristics of all communities by investing in healthy, safe and walkable neighborhoods – rural, urban or suburban.

The Conference of Mayors has long urged for this type of collaboration between key federal agencies.

For instance, federal transportation policy has not supported or provided incentives for crosscutting functional relationships and planning collaboration. With major population growth projected in many metropolitan areas and congestion already prevalent, managing decisions about meeting mobility needs and quality of life will entail decisions about more than just building more transportation capacity. Similarly, transportation investments are major economic factors, opening up new development area opportunities, creating jobs, impacting personal mobility costs, and influencing productivity. And of importance to the Conference, and the centerpiece of USCM’s platform for the next federal surface transportation authorization, is the understanding that transportation impacts the environment and climate change, both through the structure of neighborhoods and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Earlier this year before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, U.S. Conference of Mayors Transportation and Communications Committee Chair Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper said, “In Denver, this means that our transportation decisions are tied to promoting livable urban centers and sustainable development broadly.”