Nominations Open for 2020-21 Governors’ Smart Communities Award

Deadline: 27-Jul-21

Nominations are now open for the 2020-21 Governors’ Smart Communities Award for outstanding work by local governments and their partners on community planning and development.

The Governor’s Smart Communities Awards recognize outstanding efforts of local communities and their partners throughout the state, creating vibrant and livable communities by achieving the goals of the Growth Management Act and other community development objectives. The Department of Commerce administers the awards program.

Held each year since 2006, the Awards recognize local governments whose exceptional planning efforts have significantly enriched their communities in the areas of job growth, economic development, housing affordability, homelessness, parks and recreation, transportation and subarea development. These achievements are outstanding models for Washington’s local governments.

Award Categories

Smart Vision Award – for a Comprehensive Plan, Subarea Plan or Countywide Planning Policies.
- Recognizing the successful achievement of a county, city, or town plan or policy for forming its local community vision, through an amendment to the comprehensive plan, subarea plan, or countywide planning policies, including robust community engagement and outreach.
Smart Projects Award – for Project implementing a Comprehensive Plan.
- Recognizing the successful achievement of a governmental project with implementing a local county, city, or town’s comprehensive plan. These may include, but are not limited to, adoption of implementing development regulations, infrastructure projects, community facilities, community-driven art installations, design implements, or parks.
Smart Partnership Award – for a Joint Public Project that Implements a Comprehensive Plan.
- Successful applicants will demonstrate the joint implementation of a local county, city or town’s comprehensive plan. These may include, but are not limited to, regional open space network plans, government-to-government long-term planning strategies, region-benefitting infrastructure projects, public/private partnerships.
Smart Housing Strategies Award — for creative Plans, Policies, Programs and/or Actions.
- Successful applicants will demonstrate innovation and creative strategies to address housing affordability through plans, policies, programs, development regulations and/or actions. For example, subarea plans that increase housing capacity, new housing element, policies with particular attention towards affordability, equity and displacement.
NEW Smart Equity Strategies Award — for Plans, Policies, Programs and/or Actions Addressing Impacts to Community Equity
- Successful applicants will demonstrate the use of planning techniques to address impacts of equity and the protection of vulnerable people, places and systems. For example, plans or policies that directly address mitigation of impacts, such as displacement or gentrification by demonstrating how equity was achieved, such as the ending of negative effects and reversing redlining, unequitable exposure to toxins, poor air quality or extreme heat, urban renewal, gerrymandering & exclusionary zoning, or other inequitable land-use policies.
NEW Smart Climate Change Strategies Award — for Plans, Policies, Programs and/or Actions
- Addressing Community Climate Impacts Successful applicants will demonstrate innovation and creative strategies to address local-issues driven by a rapidly changing climate, i.e. a community with extreme temperature events, flooding, fire hazards. Recognizing that different areas of the state will employ different tools and strategies, i.e. the prevention of wildfires in a region east of the cascades, and a fast-growing coastal city where flooding and storm efects are the most prominent threat.