Joining Up Transportation, Housing, and Environmental Policy - Brookings Institution

Description

By the annals of Congress, it’s seemingly unremarkable, but an extraordinary hearing took place this week at the Senate Banking Committee. The secretaries of Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, appeared together and specifically spoke about cooperating to tackle the big economic, energy, and environmental challenges facing the country.
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So, in addition to the very fact that these three cabinet members discussed their approaches for a coordinated and integrated partnership, the hearing was notable for three specific proposals:

First is the articulation of a set of "livability principles" that will provide the basis for this new interagency partnership. The principles that the policies will support are certainly noteworthy: transportation choices, affordable housing, economic competitiveness, and stronger communities and neighborhoods.

And together they represent what has been missing for so long: federal leadership and a new, unified vision for integrated transportation, housing, and environmental policy.

Second is the announcement by committee Chairman Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) to empower places through a new set of federally-funded competitive grants. These proposed grants would seek to assist states and metropolitan areas in one of their hardest tasks: developing truly integrated transportation, land use, and economic development plans to serve projected growth over the next several decades. They would be awarded to entice states and metropolitan areas to devise their own innovations for coping with congestion and greenhouse gas emissions across transportation, housing, land use, economic development, and energy policies.

Third was a pledge by the panel and the chairman to ensure that housing consumers and suppliers are made aware of the full direct costs of housing. The aim is to maximize government performance and redefine what we mean by "affordable" housing to take into account not only the cost of the housing, but also the cost of transportation and energy associated with that housing.

Original URL

http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2009/0617_transportation_puentes.aspx

http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2009/0617_transportation_puentes.aspx