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The term "smart growth" has been adopted by many different organizations for an array of very different policies. The term thus may have lost specificity and even meaningful content due to the divergent perceptions and agendas of the organizations using the term. This paper is a preliminary effort to parse the different meanings of smart growth currently in use and to assess the range of approaches and activities now promulgated under the smart growth label. Smart growth statements from ten national organizations with diverged land use agendas are reviewed. Despite their differing agenda, their broad conceptual definitions are found to converge. Turning to implementation efforts, the authors then review 49 documents regarding policies and programs in Georgia and Kentucky. The documents exhibit extreme variety in the meanings ascribed to smart growth. Few of the plans and policies incorporate multiple interventions, which is a key dimension of the smart growth approach as described by the national groups. The review also suggests that there is little reason to assume a great deal of commonality in the implementation process and emphasis between two or more programs sharing the smart growth label.

Catherine Bauer, recently designated a "planning pioneer" by the American Instilute of Certified Planners, was a major theorist in the field of planning between 1934 and 1964, a critical era for the profession. Her inf luence rested on a variety of positions that she took in her writing. This paper surveys this work and shows how she focused on five questions treating housing, urban redevelopment, regional planning, suburbanization, social planning, and urbanization in the third world. No one in the profession today is duplicating Bauer's role as an observer and critic of the urban world.