User:Hannahazimi/Land-use planning

Land-use planning and environmental sustainability
Throughout the world, there are rising levels of environmental degradation due to unclean energy usage in the development and powering of cities and neighborhoods. In the 20th century, there was a global push to develop large cities quickly to accommodate the people who were migrating from rural areas to cities for jobs. The type of energy used for this was either coal or oil fuel, which meant that the environment was disregarded and damaged by numerous urban development projects. Today, the United Nations has found that over half of the world's population lives in cities that are still growing. In order to create environmentally viable urban landscapes, the UN advocated for green energy use, as well as urban development that encouraged green-friendly transportation. In the United States, about 75% of the energy used is allocated to power buildings and modes of transportation; land-use planning can be a useful tool in changing these aspects of energy usage in a way that would be beneficial to both residents and the ecology.

A sustainable urban development includes:


 * Methods for reducing waste, such as recycling and composting programs that are easily accessible to residents.
 * Limiting pollution, with techniques such as protecting universal access to necessities and encouraging access to facilities, goods, and services in ways that do not require the use of a car.
 * Encouraging public transportation usage and spread within a city.

The Partnership for Sustainable Communities, created by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the U.S. Department Of Transportation, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2009 was intended to encourage sustainable land-use planning. This partnership helps to ensure that federal housing projects, transportation, and other neighborhood infrastructure would help residents live closer to jobs, while also reducing pollution since there would be less commute time. Over the past decade, this federal partnership has funded 1,066 projects across the 50 States, as well as Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico. The total amount of grant money given to these projects has reached approximately $4.6 billion. Some of the programs that the partnership sponsors are the Housing and Urban Development's “Sustainable Communities Regional Planning” and “Community Challenge Grant Programs”. These programs have made important strides in sustainable urban planning, with about 40 percent of U.S. citizens now having access to communities who were awarded these grants. Both of these programs make up $240 million in federal investment towards local land-use planning efforts.