Smart Growth
Tall Timbers supports smart growth as an approach to building better communities, conserving farmland, open space, and critical natural resources, and efficiently utilizing scarce tax dollars. The principles of smart growth are applicable to communities throughout the Red Hills from Thomasville to Tallahassee and Cairo to Monticello. Smart growth principles include:
- Mix land uses.
- Take advantage of compact building design.
- Create a range of housing opportunities and choices.
- Create walkable neighborhoods.
- Foster distinctive, attractive communities with a strong sense of place.
- Preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty, and critical environmental areas.
- Strengthen and direct development towards existing communities.
- Provide a variety of transportation choices.
- Make development decisions predictable, fair, and cost effective.
- Encourage community and stakeholder collaboration in development decisions.
For more, download the EPA’s Getting to Smart Growth and
Getting to Smart Growth 2

Why is Tall Timbers involved in
community planning?
- The rapid pace of voluntary annexation into the City of Tallahassee between 1980 and 2000, during which time the City increased from 28 to 98 square miles.
- The conversion of nearly 100,000 acres of rural land in Leon County to residential subdivisions between 1950 and 2000.
- The proliferation of many proposed infrastructure projects and potentially incompatible land uses throughout the rural Red Hills, which threatened to fragment this landscape. One example of many is Tall Timbers’ successful effort mitigating the widening of US 319 and creating a scenic parkway.
- The potential to actively partner with Red Hills communities to achieve smart growth outcomes that reduce costly sprawl, protect working rural lands, and more efficiently allocate limited tax dollars.

