Futurewise's work offers a tremendous range of benefits for our communities, including:

Creating healthy, attractive communities for children and families

The cornerstone of the battle against sprawl is investing in attractive, livable communities where there are parks and libraries that children and seniors can safely walk and bicycle to, where there is a range of housing options for people of all ages, where people know and enjoy their neighbors, and where people don't spend their lives in cars.

Tackling traffic problems

Vehicle miles traveled has grown four times faster than population in the Puget Sound region. Sprawling development that separates housing from stores and offices force people to drive. Futurewise's work helps create communities where mass transit, bicycling and walking are real options for people. We also work to increase funding for transit and other transportation choices.

Protecting wildlife habitat and saving salmon

Irresponsible development is destroying critical habitat in urban and rural areas. It pollutes our streams and rivers, degrading the land they flow through and creating conditions that salmon and other wildlife cannot survive. Good growth management protects and expands parks and other open spaces because they are ecologically important and are essential to the livability of our urban areas.

Promoting economic fairness

Channeling growth into urban areas encourages job creation in the places where most low income people and people of color live. It reduces the burden on lower-income taxpayers to subsidize the extension of public services like sewers and roads to new, higher income developments in rural areas, and it helps maintain the tax base that cities need to tackle poverty and fund public education.

Conserving tax dollars

Smart growth management saves your taxpayer dollars by using existing infrastructure more efficiently. Extending roads and highways, sewer and water lines, schools and services like police and fire protection to sprawling areas is dramatically more expensive than providing them in existing communities.

Supporting schools

Smart growth management helps schools thrive and succeed. Sprawl, on the other hand, forces already struggling school systems to make massive investments in new buildings and transporting students. The exodus of higher-income taxpayers to the urban fringe erodes the tax base needed to support a good urban school system.

Protecting farmlands and food production

Urban sprawl consumes thousands of acres of Washington's prime farmland every year, making our food system less sustainable. The average food item already travels 1,300 miles before it reaches the consumer.

How you can help