2004 Sacramento Regional Blueprint

What is the Blueprint?

The Sacramento Blueprint is a smart growth vision for the region that was adopted by the SACOG Board of Directors in 2004.  The spirit of the Blueprint is to integrate land use and transportation planning to curb sprawl, cut down on vehicle emission and congestion in order to improve the quality of life for residents of the region.  It accomplishes this by implementing smart growth principles that encourage a variety of housing options closer to employment, shopping, and entertainment hubs, which gives options for people to walk, bike, or take public transportation to work and play.   

Blueprint Growth Principles:

Transportation Choice

Developments should encourage people to walk, bike, use public transit or carpool to their destinations. 

Compact Development

Creating environments that are more compactly built and use space in an efficient but attractive manner helps to encourage more walking, biking, and transit use and shorter auto trips.

Mixed-Use Development

Building homes, shops, entertainment, offices, and even light industrial uses near each other can create active, vital neighborhoods.  The mix of uses can occur on many different scales and be either vertical (such as a single building with a ground floor business and residences on upper floors) or horizontal (with a combination of uses in close proximity).  Mixed use 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.

Housing Choice and Diversity

Providing a variety of places where people can live- apartments, townhomes, condominiums and single-family detached homes of varying lot sizes- creates opportunities for the variety of people who need them: families, singles, seniors and people with special needs.

Use of Existing Assets

In urbanized areas, development on infill or vacant lands, intensification of the existing use (for example, adding additional buildings to a low density shopping center), or redevelopment can make better use of existing public infrastructure, including roads.

Natural Resource Conservation

Developments should incorporate public use open space (such as parks, town squares, trails, and greenbelts) to help create a sense of community and attractive neighborhoods. Additionally, conserving natural places and resources including open space, agriculture, and wildlife and habitat areas contributes to improving quality of life by providing cleaner air and outdoor experiences.

Quality Design

The design details of any land development (such as relationship to the street, placement of garages, facades, sidewalks, street widths, landscaping, etc.) are all factors that influence the attractiveness of living in a compact development and facilitate the ease of walking within and in and out of a community.