Why Streetsmart?

We get it. Civic leaders struggle to find the evidence they need to evaluate and prioritize transportation investments. The research is scattered, time-consuming to find, and difficult to digest. We do all the work of synthesizing the research and presenting it in an intuitive and easy-to-use format, without compromising quality or rigor.

Civic leaders need to make the case for solutions that work best for their community, which sometimes requires defending innovation. Streetsmart reduces risk by providing the evidence and examples of what works in other communities. We’ve got your back.

Find success stories with key lessons learned in one easy-to-search place. Why re-invent the wheel? Streetsmart offers insight via case studies and guidebooks relevant to each topic area. Learn from others in the trenches, working on issues similar to yours.

Sign up for our newsletter to keep posted on our progress!

About Streetsmart

Streetsmart, an incorporated nonprofit organization, gives you the evidence and insight you need to prioritize, defend, and decide what transportation solutions works best in your community. Our proof-of-concept prototype is ready for your feedback. We’re building partnerships and pursuing research projects to build the beta version of Streetsmart.

Kelly Rodgers is the Executive Director of Streetsmart. Kelly has worked in the field of sustainable urbanism for nearly 20 years, combining her expertise in city planning and landscape architecture to develop creative and effective solutions to urban challenges. She is also a doctoral student at Portland State University. Get in touch with her at Kelly@thinkstreetsmart.org.

Streetsmart is possible because of the encouragement and wisdom of its board and advisors:

Board

  • Gretchen Armijo, AICP, is the first Built Environment Administrator for the City and County of Denver, improving community health through the use of evidence-based strategies across City plans, policies and projects. She is an urban planner with public health expertise, including the use of Health Impact Assessment (HIA) to inform land use and transportation planning.
  • Denver Igarta leads the Complete Streets Planning Team at the City of Portland Bureau of Transportation.  His works has focused on a range of transportation policy, street design initiatives and pedestrian, bicycle, transit and freight planning efforts. He served as one of the authors of the Portland Bicycle Plan for 2030.
  • Dr. Steven M. Lavrenz is a professor of Civil Engineering at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI. His research areas include transportation health and safety, traffic operations and mobility, smart communities, and transportation systems management and operations (TSMO).
  • Jessica Lord is a software engineer based in New York City. She's an advocate for open source software and is active in that space. She transitioned to software engineering after a fellowship with Code for America, a program for building open source software for cities. Prior to the fellowship Jessica worked as an urban designer for the City of Boston and has a degree in Architecture from Georgia Tech.
  • Garlynn Woodsong is a geographer, urban planner, and real estate developer working to support smart growth and urban planning, with efforts that range from scenario planning to regional transportation policy and bicycle planning to missing middle housing. Garlynn is advancing the state of practice in planning with his lessons learned, including those from the first adaptive re-use triplex and fourplex projects that he recently completed in Portland, Oregon. He currently is a partner with Cascadia Partners and has previously worked for industry leaders Calthorpe Associates and the San Francisco Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

Advisors

  • Brian Campbell, FAICP is an urban and regional planner with 35+ years of experience as a professional planner in Oregon. He is a past member of the Board of Directors of the American Planning Association, currently serves on the Board the Oregon chapter of APA, and is a Fellow in the American Institute of Certified Planners.
  • Ed Christopher began in career in urban transportation in 1979 with the Chicago Area Transportation Study, and since worked for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics and the Metropolitan Planning Specialists for the Federal Highway Administration’s Resource Center. In 2015 Ed retired from Federal service and has been doing transportation consulting since.
  • Andrew L. Dannenberg, MD, MPH is an Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington in Seattle where he holds faculty appointments in environmental health and in urban planning.  His research and teaching focuses on examining the health and equity aspects of community design including land use, transportation, urban planning, architecture, and other issues related to the built environment.
  • Nico Larco is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Oregon and is a Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Sustainable Cities Initiative, a nationally and internationally awarded, multidisciplinary organization that focuses on sustainability issues as they relate to the built environment.
  • Andy Likuski, with a background in software development and urban planning, has created urban design and planning software packages for companies such as Sketchup and Calthorpe Analytics. He is currently the Chief Technology Officer for State of Place, a start-up that quantifies the value of urban design. Andy has a master’s in urban and regional planning from Tufts University.
  • Deborah Salon is an Assistant Professor of Transportation in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University and Associate Director of the TOMNET University Transportation Center. Salon studies transportation in cities with the goal of better understanding of how these systems work, and how policies and smart investments might improve them.
  • Nader Afzalan, PhD, with 20 years' track record of managing, researching, and implementing projects that intersect city, technology, and planning, Nader has consistently worked with professionals from academia and industry. These experiences have resulted in managing and implementing land-use and transportation planning projects in the U.S., China, and the Middle East and publishing over 30 articles, including policy reports and peer-reviewed journal papers.
  • Shawn Leight works to develop transportation solutions that support community values by forging relationships and advancing forward thinking solutions. He is the vice president and a principal owner of CBB Transportation Engineers + Planners, where he manages day-to-day project delivery and business development efforts.  Shawn is heavily involved in professional organizations that support the transportation engineering industry, serving as the President of the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) in 2017. He is a licensed Professional Engineer and a certified Professional Traffic Operations Engineer (PTOE) and Professional Transportation Planner (PTP).  Shawn obtained a B.S. degree in Environmental Engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point and a M.S. degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
  • Neil Maizlish, PhD, MPH is an epidemiologist with over 30 years of experience in quantitative research methods, statistics, and health informatics in local and state government, academia, community clinics, unions, and the private sector. He currently a Visiting Researcher at the University of California, Davis, where he models the health co-benefits of active transport as a greenhouse gas mitigation strategy. He is also a Senior Research Scientist at the Public Health Institute, where he focuses on the development of healthy community indicators.

Streetsmart was designed by the stellar team at Osage Orange, Elena Moon and Jos Vaught.

Collaborate

We are always looking for academic and practitioner collaborators to build and refine Streetsmart.

  • Do you or your students want to index the evidence? We’ve got a curriculum that is adaptable for your classroom.
  • Looking for a transportation internship or master’s project? Help us collect resources and case studies on a topic of your choosing.
  • Interested in partnering on research opportunities? Help us evaluate systematic reviews, translate the results, and identify best practices.

Talk to Kelly at Kelly@thinkstreetsmart.org to explore the opportunities.