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Smart Bylaws Guide – Smart Growth Scorecard: Municipal Review

New Jersey Future
www.njfuture.org/articles/municipal_card.pdf

The purpose of the Municipal Review Scorecard is to identify smart growth strengths and weaknesses in planning and decision-making for a municipality as a whole. It provides a sense of municipal commitment to planning and the level of understanding of the complexity of land use issues. The scorecard is divided into eight sections, one for each Smart Growth criterion plus a section to establish a general planning profile of the town. The measurements under each criterion are weighted differently so that the maximum score for each measurement reflects its importance to the Smart Growth goals, which are (total possible points for that criteria are indicated in parentheses):

• Overall municipal planning profile (8);
• Near existing development and infrastructure (19);
• Range of housing options (7);
• Mix of uses (15);
• Provides choices for getting around (16);
• Walkable, designed for personal interaction (13);
• Protects open space, farmland and critical environmental areas (12); and
• Respectful of community character, design and historic features (10).

The Municipal Review Scorecard is easy to use, clear and provides ratings for each section as well as overall score that corresponds to a letter grade.