Good growth promotes a sense of community in new and expanding areas, and also promotes and protects economic vitality throughout the region. As the Blueprint Project process progresses, several principles that are considered good growth practices will be incorporated.

Transportation Choices: Over-dependence on single-occupant automobile travel can be discouraged by providing a diversity of transportation alternatives such as ridesharing, public transit, bicycling and walking, in both residential and employment areas. With community design, more trips can be made locally, and more of those trips can be made by walking, biking, and shuttles. Inclusion of parks and open space in developments encourages non-auto travel. Streets can be designed to include, for example, dedicated lanes for bicycles or special lanes for bus rapid transit.

Compact Development: In urbanized areas of all sizes and types, developments can be built with higher than normal floor-area ratios (FARs) that use space efficiently and aesthetically. This more compact development will facilitate walking, biking, or taking public transit to meet everyday travel needs.

Mixed Use Developments: Developments that include a combination of uses—residential, commercial, office and perhaps light industry—either in a vertical arrangement (mixed in one building) or horizontal (with a combination of uses in close proximity) are referred to as mixed use. These types of projects function as local activity centers, contributing to a sense of community, where people tend to walk or bike to destinations and interact more with each other. Separated land uses, on the other hand, lead to the need to travel more by auto because of distance. Mixed land uses can occur at many scales. Examples include: a housing project located near an employment center, a small shopping center located within a residential neighborhood, and a building with ground floor retail and apartments or condominiums on the upper floors.

Use of Existing Assets: In urbanized areas, development on infill or vacant lands, intensification of the use of underutilized parcels (for example, more development on the site of a low density retail strip shopping center), or redevelopment can make better use of existing public infrastructure. This can also include rehabilitation and reuse of historic buildings, denser clustering of buildings in suburban office parks, and joint use of existing public facilities such as schools and parking garages. Mixed use and compact development in the vicinity of public transit stations and stops (known as transit-oriented development) can boost transit ridership and reduce driving.

Housing Diversity: A variety of different housing types for families with and without children, singles, seniors and people of special needs, will allow people to choose what fits their needs, desires and incomes. Affordable housing (for very low, low, and moderate-income people), either market rate or regulated, is often not adequate to the need and becomes a real issue in areas where people work but cannot afford to live, causing them to have to travel long distances to work.

Quality Building and Site Design: The details of a land use development—such as the orientation of buildings with relation to the street, setbacks, facades, placement of garages, sidewalks, landscaping, and the aesthetics of building design— are all factors that can influence the attractiveness of living in a compact development and the ease of using alternative modes of transportation such as walking and biking. How a development is designed, for instance with outdoor activity spaces, is an important factor in creating a sense of community.

Environmental Conservation: This principle includes public-use open space attached to development projects (such as parks and greenbelts), wildlife and plant habitat preservation, agricultural preservation and promotion of environment-friendly practices such as energy efficient design, water conservation and stormwater management, and shade trees to reduce the ground temperatures in the summer. In addition to conserving resources and protecting species, this principle improves overall quality of life by providing places for people who live in compact developments to go to enjoy the outdoors. Walking and bicycling are more likely to be the modes of transportation in public-use open space areas.