Smart Location, Linkages, and Project Documentation
What the exam tests
Smart Location and Linkage tests where the project sits and how it connects: preferred locations, transit, bicycle networks, housing and jobs balance, schools, steep slopes, habitat, wetlands, agricultural land, and floodplains. The documentation portion tests whether those claims are provable with boundary maps, site plans, calculations, and commitments.
Core rules
The SLL prerequisites are Smart Location, Imperiled Species and Ecological Communities, Wetland and Water Body Conservation, Agricultural Land Conservation, and Floodplain Avoidance. Smart Location favors infill, previously developed land, and sites served by existing infrastructure or in priority development areas. Credits reward access to quality transit, bicycle facilities, proximity of housing to jobs, school proximity, and protection or restoration of habitat and steep slopes.
Worked example
A site is a former parking lot inside an existing town, served by water and sewer, and one-quarter mile from a bus stop. It is a preferred location and may pursue transit credit if service frequency and walk access meet the credit requirements. But if the site contains a mapped wetland, the team must avoid it and document the buffer; the infill location does not waive the wetland prerequisite.
Documentation and traps
Use a scaled boundary and site plan, transit schedule and route map, bicycle network map, calculations, and letters of commitment. For plan certification, commitments must be enforceable; for built certification, provide as-built and survey evidence. Do not confuse adjacent to transit with quality transit; frequency matters. Do not assume a brownfield is automatically preferred without remediation evidence. Do not draw a boundary that excludes areas needed to support density or transit claims.