Case Studies in Smart Growth Implementation

About the Community Anchorage is a combined city-county government that covers Alaska's largest and most important metropolitan area. The combined municipality covers almost 2,000 square miles and has a population of over 280,000. Some 220,000 people live in the " Anchorage Bowl " – the urban area on the Anchorage peninsula that is cut off from the rest of the municipality by geography, military installations and a National Forest. The Bowl covers about 100 square miles but only has 11,700 acres of undeveloped land left State of Smart Growth Implementation Anchorage Bowl must accommodate an additional 80,000 residents by 2020 but is running out of raw land. Recent development, both residential and commercial, has been of low quality, even in fairly central locations. Anchorage's policies had nibbled around the edges of these issues-for example, a big-box design review policy had been adopted – but the city had not addressed core smart growth questions in its codes. In 2001, the Municipality of Anchorage adopted the Anchorage 2020 Comprehensive Plan, which serves as a blueprint for development in the Anchorage Bowl for the next 20 years. Anchorage 2020 called for more focused and compact development and represented a radical departure from the traditional planning model in Anchorage.