East Baton Rouge Parish is beginning to look and feel different. On corridors like Government Street – once a historically disinvested stretch – families are now walking, biking and gathering around thriving small businesses where traffic once sped past. These changes are not accidental but the result of a decade-long effort to redesign streets around the needs of people, not just cars.
“Culturally, this is helping shift the way people think about getting around Baton Rouge without a car,” said Jessica Kemp, vice president of the Center for Planning Excellence (CPEX). “In the past, our community has fallen into the habit of only focusing on vehicular needs, so it’s been rewarding to see the shift in mindsets at the local level where people are becoming more willing to accommodate other modes of transportation like walking and biking.”
Gaining the National Spotlight
That steady progress is exactly why the parish, called a county outside of Louisiana, is now earning national attention. Smart Growth America recently placed East Baton Rouge Parish on its 2025 Best Complete Streets Policies list, which recognizes communities that build policies designed to move ideas into action through clear expectations for funding, measurement, accountability and real-world results. East Baton Rouge ranked sixth, placing it among the top 10 policies in the nation.
“Complete Streets policies matter in every community because they’re designed to meet the specific needs of that place,” said Heidi Simon, director of Thriving Communities at Smart Growth America. “The strongest policies make it safer and easier for people to get where they need to go – whether they’re walking, driving, biking or taking transit. We applaud East Baton Rouge Parish’s commitment to a policy that’s poised to deliver real, on-the-ground improvements for the people who live there.”
From Vision to Implementation
For Kemp and the broader coalition of advocates behind Baton Rouge’s complete streets work, the recognition affirms years of commitment and marks the shift from policy development to deeper implementation.
“We’re making progress on complete streets in Baton Rouge, and it’s changing how we live and travel and spend our leisure time,” she said.
CPEX’s push for stronger Complete Streets policies dates back more than a decade. A Voices for Healthy Kids grant provided some of the necessary resources to advance this long-term effort and strengthen the city’s original policy into an ordinance.
“When we passed the Baton Rouge Complete Streets Policy in 2014, we knew that was just a starting point,” Kemp said, noting that strengthening that policy into a binding ordinance required significant outreach and community education. “The Voices for Healthy Kids funding provided the resources needed to engage in the 18-month process of facilitating working groups, researching, reworking drafts, meeting with council members, and educating the public on what was necessary to get from a policy to an ordinance. CPEX is grateful to have had the opportunity to engage with this grant.”
Turning Investment Into Impact
Kemp said Voices for Healthy Kids’ technical assistance and relationship-building were essential to the work. Voices for Healthy Kids connected CPEX to Smart Growth America’s Complete Streets Coalition, which reviewed drafts, shared model language, and graded the ordinance, helping improve its score from a D to a B. That support helped position the East Baton Rouge policy among the top 10 in the nation. Kemp called the partnership one of the most valuable components of the grant.
“When communities get the resources and trusted partnerships they need, they can transform a policy into pavement, sidewalks and bike lanes,” said Shannon Melluzzo, senior grants administrator at Voices for Healthy Kids. “Investments like this one help local leaders turn momentum into measurable change.”
As Baton Rouge continues expanding its network of sidewalks, protected bike lanes and safer crossings, Kemp said the goal is simple: create a city where people can move freely and safely without depending on a car.
“By creating more spaces in our community that are designed to operate at human speed, we hope to increase social cohesion and make our public streets places where people can get to know their neighbors.”