New analysis tools, such as the Housing and Transportation Affordability Index ( ), Smart Location Mapping (www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/smart-location-mapping), and Street Smart (www.thinkstreetsmart.org), provide practical guidance and maps for evaluating multimodal accessibility for people, worksites and communities, and therefore for measuring Smart Growth impacts. [...] Sprawl has two primary impacts: it increases per capita land consumption, and it disperses development which increases the distances between common destinations, and therefore the costs of providing public infrastructure and services, and the travel costs required to access services and activities. [...] They also identify congestion, health, and well-being costs that can result from higher urban densities, and so recommend mitigation policies that maximize benefits and minimize costs, to ensure efficient and equitable access to housing, services, and jobs in compact cities. [...] Cities are often located in areas with high valuable farmlands and unique natural lands such as river deltas, shorelines and forests; farmlands in Idaho and Kansas are not substitutes for farmlands in California or Vermont, and environmental lands in Texas and Ohio are not substitutes for shorelines in Washington and Florida. [...] 22 Understanding Smart Growth Savings Victoria Transport Policy Institute Public Fitness and Health Several studies find that Smart Growth tends to increase physical fitness and health by increasing the amount of time people send walking and bicycling (Ewing and Hamidi 2014; Iravani and Rao 2019; Rachele, et al.
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