Awesome little video on the case for smart growth

This is a terrific production.  The film actually doesn't mention the phrase "smart growth," preferring "new urbanism."  That's more than forgivable, since it was made for a contest sponsored by our friends at the Congress for New Urbanism.  

If one wants to parse semantics, I might argue that smart growth stresses more where development should go, while new urbanism stresses more what its form should be.  That's basically the difference between a movement created by environmental policy wonks and one created by architects.  Both are essential to sustainability, and the combination of the two (smart location + good urbanist design) is more powerful than either alone.  But, really, there's so much overlap between the two schools of thought that the godfather of new urbanism, Andres Duany, called his development handbook The Smart Growth Manual (and, if you don't have it, you should; my review is here).

I wanted to mention that, but let's not dwell on it, because this is a great little video that should be spread far and wide.  Enjoy:

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