Governors' Letter

To America's Governors, their cabinets and staffs,

It is with pleasure and a sense of optimism that we invite your attention to Policies that Work: A Governors' Guide to Growth and Development, a helpful new publication produced by the Governors' Institute on Community Design. Between its covers you will find hundreds of examples of proven programs that can help you and your state encourage smarter and more environmentally sustainable patterns of development. As former governors, we can unequivocally say that we wish we had a document like this when we were in office to serve as a roadmap to smarter growth.

As this Governors' Guide aptly suggests in its introduction, you should think of this document as a shortcut to the policies, administrative actions, and spending decisions that can help your state effectively address growth and land use issues. Other states have worked on many of the same problems your state currently faces. Why not adopt or adapt their good ideas?

A number of people had a hand in putting this document together, including staff at the two agencies that provide funding for the Governors' Institute on Community Design: the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Endowment for the Arts. The document also benefited from review by several well-respected experts.

The real credit for this document, however, must go to those governors, staff assistants, and cabinet secretaries who tackled the difficult problems related to growth and development and created the thoughtful, innovative approaches to them. As former governors, we understand how politically difficult it is to address land use issues, but also how important it is to our future for states to do so. We hope that this Governors' Guide allows you to find the programs, approaches, and strategies that will help you lead your state to a more sustainable future.

With best wishes for every success,

Parris N. Glendening
Governor of Maryland
(1995-2003)

Christine Todd Whitman
Governor of New Jersey
(1994-2001)