Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

One of the goals of urban planning 'smart growth' policies is providing a variety of transportation options and promoting the use of carpooling, public transportation, bicycling, and walking, all of which are considered more sustainable than driving alone. This paper examines the relationship between sustainable transportation and the presence of state-level smart growth policies using a difference-in-differences analysis with data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Given that Maryland enacted state-level smart growth policies in 2009 and 2010, this paper compares the Baltimore metropolitan area to the Denver metropolitan area, which has no state-level smart growth policies but some demographic similarities to the Baltimore metropolitan area. This analysis finds a 2.2 percentage point increase in sustainable transportation use in Baltimore attributable to the smart growth policies in Maryland that were passed in 2009 and 2010.