1000 Friends of Connecticut is a statewide organization whose mission is to promote and shape growth to ensure a prosperous economy, a healthy natural environment, and distinctive, integrated and attractive communities while promoting opportunities in education, housing, transportation, and employment for current and future generations. To accomplish this mission, 1000 Friends of Connecticut works to: Strengthen and direct new development towards communities where infrastructure already exists in order to manage sprawling development and its several costs, including costs to the economy, the private sector, the government, the individual, the environment, and society as a whole;Encourage compact, diverse, and livable communities by offering a wide range of housing choices and encouraging a mixture of land uses, preserving and restoring historic and cultural assets, designing to human scale, and providing comfortable walking, biking, and transit opportunities;Support high quality public transportation and transit-oriented development as preferred alternatives to the single-passenger automobile in order to positively affect business locations decisions, reduce traffic congestion and air pollution, and provide greater access to job opportunities;Promote quality educational and housing opportunities for all our state's residents. 1000 Friends pursues its goals by: Educating and mobilizing the public at the local and state levels, and convening and mediating among diverse stakeholders to build statewide support for Smart Growth principles;Researching fiscal, regulatory, land-use, and transportation and other Smart Growth initiatives;Promoting the adoption of policies, initiatives, and practices by government, business, and other institutions that encourage economic growth while preserving the state's quality of life;Building and sustaining a constituency for Smart Growth and social equity by providing tools and models to measure progress and to advocate for change.