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AN INTRODUCTION TO TRANSIT-ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT

01THENEWTRANSIT TOWN

An Introduction to TransitOriented Development

Census figures for the year 2000 and research by the Brookings Center on Urban and Metropolitan
Policy and the Fannie Mae Foundation show that this urban rebirth is driven by demographic
changes, including the rise in immigration, the aging of baby boomers, and the increase in
nonfamily households. These changes add up to a growing market for smaller homes, and the
increased popularity of cities. Urban centers are once again seen as attractive, lively places in
which to live and work, and as hubs of intellectual and creative capacity.

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The second, and equally powerful, trend is the continuing growth and emerging maturity

of Americas suburbs, many of which are struggling to become cities in their own right.
Suburban areas are increasingly diverse in race, ethnicity, and income, and are increasingly
Debates about transportation and cities almost always generate more heat than light. First,
there is the continuing debate about highways and transit. Transit proponents have been
guilty of over-promising all sorts of environmental and social benefits from transit investment,
without refer-ence to the fact that transit is a specialized tool. Moreover, the sheer dominance
of automobiles and highways makes any move toward more compact, transit-oriented land
use of necessity gradual. For their part, highway and automobile enthusiasts tend to
condemn transit by using national statistics and regional averages, without reference to the
fact that transit is largely a tool for urban areas and works best as part of an integrated set of
strategies involving transit, devel-opment, and other supportive policies.
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Another debate pits libertarians and smart growth advocates against one another over land

use. The libertarians argue that todays growth patterns reflect market demands, ignoring decades
of government intervention in planning and government subsidization of highways and
automobiles. For their part, smart growth advocates tend to overstate the effectiveness of plan-ning
remedies and ignore the very real and persistent appeal of the detached single-family home in a
suburb with good schools, not to mention the difficulty of changing entrenched lifestyles and habits.
Transit-oriented development (TOD) has been touted as a panacea, with some arguing that all
metropolitan growth can be accommodated through higher density infill development along transit
linesa physical possibility perhaps, but not viable in a democracy.
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This book tries to take a middle path. We believe that transit and transit-oriented develop-

ment are essential parts of the toolkit for healthy metropolitan economies and improved qual-ity of
life. But we acknowledge that transit and transit-oriented development have their limita-tions, that
autos, highways, and suburbs are also integral parts of the toolkit, and that a return to the era of
streetcar suburbs is neither possible nor necessarily desirable. This book attempts to help fill a gap
in the marketplace by evaluating the first generation of transit-oriented devel-opment, by setting
some guideposts for the next generation, and by proposing some standards of practice. With this
publication, we are trying to take advantage of three converging trends.
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The first trend is the resurgence of investment in Americas downtowns. We are seeing the

reinhabitation of our urban centers at a level that has not been experienced since World War II.

experiencing the pangs of rapid growth. Suburbs need to diversify land uses in order to build
more solid rev-enue bases; they need to create urban centers and address the problem of
traffic congestion along overtaxed suburban arterials. In addition, they need to respond to the
desires of many sub-urban residents who have chosen not to move back into cities but who
nevertheless want some urban amenities in their towns. In short, suburbs are increasingly
being challenged to become more than bedroom communities.
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The third trend is a renewed interest in rail travel and rail investment. Virtually every

major city in America is planning some form of urban rail or busway system, and states are
joining together to plan and build high-speed rail systems linking metropolitan regions in the
West, Midwest, Northeast, and South. In fact, the competition for limited federal funds is so
intense that the wait for federal mass transit funding for a new project is estimated at almost
fifty years. New rail or rapid bus systems have opened in the past ten years in such
nontraditional places as Dallas, Denver, San Diego, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake
City, with substantial system expansions underway in virtually every traditional rail city.
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At the convergence of these three trends is the potential for a substantial market for a

new form of walkable, mixed-use urban development around new and existing rail or rapid
bus sta-tions. Changing demographics are resulting in a need for the diversification of real
estate prod-ucts, and the type of development known variously as transit villages or transitoriented devel-opment is beginning to receive serious attention in markets as diverse as the
San Francisco Bay Area, suburban New Jersey, Atlanta, Dallas, and Chicago. These transitoriented developments have the potential to provide residents with improved quality of life
and reduced household transportation expenses, while providing the region with stable
mixed-income neighborhoods that reduce environmental impacts and provide real
alternatives to traffic congestion. New research clearly shows that this kind of development
can reduce household transportation costs, thereby making housing more affordable.
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Sadly, our review of the projects that are emerging across the country reveals that many of

the first phases of these new transit towns fail to meet these important objectives. Somewhere
between the conceptualization and opening day, many projects end up becoming fairly

THE NEW TRANSIT TOWN

AN INTRODUCTION TO TRANSIT-ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT

traditional suburban developments that are simply transit-adjacent. Issues include unfriendly

Viewing TOD in Its Historical Context

zoning codes and parking ordinances. Difficulties in dealing with the institutional complexities are

Transit-oriented development should be viewed in a historical context. Transit has been

also prevalent, with the chief confusion being the relative roles of local jurisdictions and tran-sit

around since the advent of the horse-drawn streetcar, and cities have always been at least

agencies. Financing is difficult as well, with a lack of understanding about how best to finance

partially shaped by their transportation modeswhether walking, streetcars, or automobiles.

mixed-use projects, and a lack of intermediary assistance for nonprofits and localities that want to

In fact, many of the urban design patterns that we seek to restore were common before the

pursue TOD projects that include affordable housing and involve minority-owned businesses.

advent of the automobile; they simply arose spontaneously in cities for pedestrians. While

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The amount of hype around TOD far exceeds the progress to date, with many transit

TOD may not be a new thing, the challenge of adapting it to the auto-oriented metropolis is.

pro-ponents selling new transit investments on the basis of future land-use changes. The
result has been that transit opponents have begun to deride TOD as a failure by critiquing the

THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY: DEVELOPMENT-ORIENTED TRANSIT

performance of the flawed projects discussed above. This presents a particular challenge for

The streetcar suburbs that existed before the 1900s evolved in a setting that no longer exists.

the transit indus-try, because the long-term success of many projects depends on

Often, the streetcar lines and their adjacent residential communities were developed by a

development trends over which the industry has, at best, only indirect control.

single owner who built transit to add value to the residential development by providing a link

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This book is an attempt to bring clarity to the debate by placing projects in a historical con-

between jobs in an urban center and housing at the periphery, or by an entrepreneur who

tinuum, by creating a performance-oriented definition, and by analyzing and confronting the

worked hand in hand with the developer. Indeed, the phrase development-oriented transit

challenges that have been encountered. The research, which has been sponsored by Reconnect-

more aptly describes these places than does transit-oriented development, since private

ing America through its national Center for Transit-Oriented Development, is an initial step toward

developers built transit to serve their development rather than vice-versa. As part of this

bringing TOD to scale as a recognized real estate product in the United States.

formula, streetcar stops often had small retail clusters to serve commuters as well as local

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residents. These small com-mercial districts are, to some extent, the precursor of modern

Over the past two years, we have been engaged in a collaborative effort with the Center for

Neighborhood Technology, the Congress for the New Urbanism, Strategic Economics, and the

TOD and represent a good balance between place and node.

Alliance for Transportation Research Institute to answer the question: What will it take to bring

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TOD to scale in a way that captures its potential economic and environmental advantages?

way that transit and suburban real estate development worked hand in hand to decentralize

Our work has involved a number of methods of inquiry, including a literature review,

the American city. The key to this was what Warner calls a two part city: a city of work

practitioner interviews, regional workshops, case studies, geographic information system

separated from a city of homes. Warners study focused on Boston, but a similar model

analysis of travel survey and census data, and the evaluation of existing projects.

existed in Los Angeles as well. Planning professor Martin Wachs and others have chronicled

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We seek first to understand the challenges faced, then to document the state of the TOD

Urban historian Sam Bass Warners classic work, Streetcar Suburbs, characterized the

the way that streetcar sys-tems made the growth of suburban communities such as Glendale,

practice, and finally to assemble the resources necessary to assist cities, transit

Santa Monica, and Pasadena possible in Los Angeles between 1870 and 1910.

operators, and community groups who wish to undertake these kinds of TOD projects.

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In particular, we review the first generation of projects, document the progress made in

streetcar suburbs was broken apart by the automobile and, starting in the 1930s, roads, includ-ing

defining the field, and attempt to advance the practice by defining principles to guide the

highways, became the preferred transportation infrastructure in America. Development was no

next generation of projects being planned all over the country.

longer dependent on transit, the link between transit and development was broken, and developers

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In our view, successful TOD needs to be mixed-use, walkable, location-efficient

However, the interdependence between housing, jobs, and transit inherent in the early

got out of the business of building or even thinking much abouttransit systems.

develop-ment that balances the need for sufficient density to support convenient transit
service with the scale of the adjacent community. We intend to develop techniques to

THE POSTWAR YEARS: AUTO-ORIENTED TRANSIT

help assure that TOD also remains mixed-income in character.

The postwar period saw a precipitous decline in transit use and the dismantling and abandon-ment
of many rail systems. Buses became the primary mode of transit in most regions. Bus systems are
subservient to the automobile, because they use the same streets and contend with the same
congestion, but dont perform as well. And in most cases bus service has less influence

THE NEW TRANSIT TOWN

AN INTRODUCTION TO TRANSIT-ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT

6
7

on land-use patterns than fixed-rail transit. Transit became the travel mode of last resort

has been on dense, profitable real estate development aimed at generating revenue for the

and ceased to shape development, except in some of the commuter suburbs around

tran-sit agency and the federal government. Projects were predicated on a purely financial

older cities such as Boston, New York, and Chicago, which continued to function

rationale rather than a broad vision of how transit could work in tandem with surrounding

reasonably well as transit-based communities.

development. As later sections explain, the goal of maximizing revenue from ground rents

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As congestion worsened, a new generation of transit systems was planned and built. The San

often works at cross-purposes with other goals. In other words, the highest and best use in

Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system, the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority

financial terms is not always the best for either transit users or the neighborhood.

(MARTA), and the Washington (D.C.) Metropolitan Area Transit Agency (WMATA) all opened during

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the 1970s. These systems were built with a different rationale than their predecessors. They were

increases in land value. The last decade saw subtle but promising shifts in the landscape of tran-sit

built primarily to relieve congestion, their funding was provided entirely by the public sector, and

and development, with the convergence of a number of trends: growing transit ridership, increased

little or no additional land was purchased by the transit agencies to ensure that there would be a

investment in transit (even in auto-dominated cities like Los Angeles and Dallas), frus-tration with

link between these transit investments and future development patterns.

congestion and sprawl, smart growth movements, New Urbanism, and, in general, a greater

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These systems were also explicitly designed to work with the automobile, under the assump-

There is increasing evidence that TOD can provide many other benefits besides capturing

recognition of the advantages of linking development and transit.

Architect and urbanist Peter Calthorpe, who brought together the notion of the

tion that most people would drive to suburban stations rather than walk, bike, or ride the bus.

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Whats more, they were viewed as primarily serving a regional purpose, and the individual stations

pedestrian pocket with the idea of planning development around transit stations, largely

were considered nodes within this larger system, with little concern about making them sensitive to

sparked the new interest in development around transit. In both his design practice and

the places in which they were located. Because of this, many stations were surrounded by large

his writing he advanced the concept of mixed-use development and density around

amounts of parking rather than being integrated into the neighborhoods they served; these large

transit, and was enormously influen-tial among planners and local officials beginning in

surface parking lots or structures created barriers between the station and the community.

the 1990s. Calthorpes book, The Next American Metropolis, written with associate

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While these systems all play an important roleit is difficult to imagine Washington,

Shelley Poticha, began to articulate the urban design principles associated with TOD:

D.C., without the Metro or the San Francisco Bay Area without BART they are

Organize growth on a regional level to be compact and transit-supportive.

showing their limita-tions. Despite some success, they fall short of providing the full

.
.

Place commercial, housing, jobs parks, and civic uses within walking distance of transit stops.
Create pedestrian-friendly street networks that directly connect local destinations.

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Sadly, many of the projects Calthorpe planned were either turned over to different

range of benefits that transit can stimulate. In general, they fail to contribute to
neighborhood revitalization, to reduce automo-bile dependency significantly, or to
encourage more efficient regional land-use patterns. In short, the idea that development
should be linked to transit generally was not part of the philosophy of these systems.

.
.
.
.

Provide a mix of housing types, densities, and costs.

architects or altered during the development phase, leaving much of his early TOD work
TODAY: TRANSIT-RELATED DEVELOPMENT

frustratingly unre-alized. Perhaps his efforts have most paid off in Portland, Oregon, where

Rail systems usually enhance the value of adjacent land, and transit agencies and the federal gov-

years of collaboration with Poticha and planner John Fregonese on regional and transit-

ernment see large-scale real estate development on property owned by transit agencies as a way

oriented development planning have resulted in an impressive emphasis on walkable mixed-

to capture some of that value. While this return is not necessarily sufficient to pay the total cost of

use development focused on the emerging transit and streetcar systems.

the rail investment, it at least partially reimburses public coffers. For this reason, transit agen-cies

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and the federal government have an interest in promoting intense development around transit

planning at the University of California at Berkeley. Cerveros research has centered on the

stations. This joint development approach has been used with notable success in loca-tions
around the country, including downtown San Diego, Washington, D.C., and Portland.
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This form of transit-related development is problematic because it almost inevitably leads to

a narrow definition of the relationship between transit and development. The emphasis of
most joint developmentwhich until the 1990s was virtually the only form of TOD pursued

The academic most associated with the concept of TOD is Robert Cervero, professor of

THE NEW TRANSIT TOWN

AN INTRODUCTION TO TRANSIT-ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT

8
9

relationship between transit and metropolitan development, and he has consistently

TOMORROW: TRANSIT-ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT

stressed the relationship between urban form and the type of transit best suited to

Transit-oriented development can realize its full potential only if it is seen as a new paradigm

serving a particular urban form. In two booksTransit Villages in the Twenty-First

of development rather than as a series of marginal improvements. TOD cannot be and should

Century, written with Michael Bernick, an attorney and former member of the board of

not be a utopian vision: It must operate within the constraints of the market and realistic

directors of BART, and Transit MetropolisCervero used a case study approach to

expecta-tions of behavior and lifestyle patterns. However, the market and lifestyle patterns

gather much new evidence about both styles of transit and styles of development.

can and do change as a result of both policy choices and sociocultural trends. The

Many of the projects in the United States that were studied and written about by

automobile was not always the dominant form of transportation, and suburban living was not

Calthorpe and Cervero existed only as plans, or as transit-oriented zoning codes or design

always the lifestyle of choice. These changes in American life have been fostered in part by

guidelines. Now, a decade later, we can look at the first generation of development projects

government policy, such as the mortgage interest tax deduction and the generous subsidies

around these new transit corridors to assess how well they lived up to their potential.

for road infrastructure at the expense of alternative forms of transportation.

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A closer look at TOD projects around the country shows that most still fall short of provid-ing

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Already there are clear signs that these trends are not permanent. Growth in transit ridership

the full range of potential benefits. Projects that clearly could take advantage of being adja-cent to

and renewed interest in urban living are two indicators that preferences may be changing. Federal

transit to reduce parking still use standard parking ratios, indicating an underlying assumption that

transportation legislation in the 1990s has helped shift government investment priorities away from

these projects will primarily be auto-oriented. Projects that contain a variety of uses still lack an

the automobile and toward alternatives, such as transit, walking, and biking. Transit-oriented

appropriate mixthat is, the specific uses have not been selected to create an internal synergism

development can respond to these changes by offering an alternative that is viable in the market-

but have only responded to more general market conditions. Residential projects rarely include

place while still yielding social benefits. Transit-oriented development in the twenty-first century can

units targeted at a mix of income groups or household sizes, but are focused on one particular

be a central part of the solution to a range of social and environmental problems.

market segment, be it subsidized projects targeted to lower-income households or luxury units for

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young singles and empty nesters.

likely that the type of neighborhoods we envision will become increasingly attractive. Although

As the environmental, social, commuting, and land-use trends described above progress, it is

Many of the examples examined in this book constitute good projects; most of them

defining a vision of transit and development that function complementarily is a crucial first step, it is

are significantly better than traditional development. However, the interviews conducted

not enough. The next step is to move that visionin concept and realityinto the main-stream of

over the course of our study suggest that there is little understanding of the full range of

real estate development. This requires an understanding of why relatively few projects get built,

benefits that can be achieved with TOD. This is reflected in both the physical design of

and why so many of those that do get built fall short of their potential.

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most built projects and their mix of land uses. Many projects are relatively unambitious
in what they hope to accomplish, or overly narrow in their view of the potential impacts

Defining the Scale of the Market for TOD

of TOD. Even when the aims are broader, the fact that modern transit and development

One possible reason for the relative lack of success with TOD to date is the lack of definitions,

are built by several different actors introduces sev-eral additional layers of complexity.

standards, or road maps for developers to follow. However, some critics of the concept have sug-

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Our goal is to bring TOD up to scale not just in name but in terms of the impact it can

gested another reason: There is no market for more compact, mixed-use development near tran-

have on cities, the environment, communities, and individual lives. For this reason we must

sit. After all, argue these critics, if people wanted it, wouldnt the market supply it?

set the bar high and describe a vision of TOD that is ambitious without being unrealistic. Most

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current projects fall short of this vision, and as a result we have chosen to call them transit-

that there is a serious mismatch between the potential demand for TOD and the supply, and this in

related devel-opment, a name that acknowledges the connection they have made between

turn informs us that there is a need to provide useful tools and models for practitioners.

transit and devel-opment while still recognizing their shortcomings. Not all projects in all

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places will or even can meet the standard by which true transit-oriented development should

with practitioners, staged workshops to examine and address site-specific problems, reviewed the

be defined, but without a benchmark there will be no way to judge the quality of projects or

literature, conducted economic analyses, and completed case studies. Our conclu-sions were

even to think clearly about the trade-offs that must be made when pursuing a project.

summed up in a report by urban economists Dena Belzer and Gerald Autler and

Our review both of the challenges to implementing TOD projects and of the market tells us

In order to better understand the challenges to implementing TOD, we conducted inter-views

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AN INTRODUCTION TO TRANSIT-ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT

THE NEW TRANSIT TOWN

11

This urban concentration, along with the lower income levels of most immigrant and minor-

published by the Brookings Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy and the Great

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American Station Foundation. These conclusions can be summarized as follows:

ity households, has historically meant that these households own fewer automobiles and
drive less. According to Catherine Ross and Anne Dunnings analysis of the 1995 National

There is no clear definition of TOD or agreement on desired outcomes, and hence no way of
ensuring that a project delivers these outcomes.

There are no standards or systems to help the actors involved in the development
process bring successful transit-oriented projects into existence. Without standards
and systems, successful TOD is the result of clever exceptionalism, and beyond the
reach of most com-munities or developers.
Transit-oriented development requires the participation of many actors and occurs
in a fragmented regulatory environment, adding complexity, time, uncertainty, risk,
and cost to projects.

.
.

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Although transit adds accessibility and value to a place, transit alone is insufficient to
drive real estate markets. When other market forces are not present, special actions are
needed to ensure that projects to achieve regional land use or housing goals go forward.
Without a concerted effort to develop standards and definitions, to create products and

delivery systems, and to provide research support, technical assistance, and access to capital,

TOD will remain just a promising idea.

to use pub-lic transit or walk than is population as a whole. For immigrants, this may be due
not only to income and poverty level but also to cultural factors, including the fact that they
have lived in places where auto use was the exception rather than the rule. Consequently, as
immigrants are assimilated into the population and their incomes rise, we can expect to see
both higher num-bers of drivers and a continued willingness to use public transit, particularly
if its availability, quality, and convenience continue to increase.
Empty Nesters and Echo Boomers

The second demographic trend is the aging of the baby boom generation, and its passage
from the child-rearing stage of the life cycle to the empty nest phase. Families that once
demanded the single-family home on a quarter-acre parcel in a suburban location are now
finding both the home and the location to be unsuited to this new stage of life. Evidence

THE SHIFT IN HOUSING AND NEIGHBORHOOD PREFERENCES

Cities, once stigmatized as crime-ridden repositories of the poor, are now being seen as vital,
resource-rich places, in part because urban density creates the opportunity for a more diverse mix
of amenities than is available in one-dimensional suburban locations. A larger trend, how-ever, lies
just underneath this change in attitude. The demographics of the country are gradu-ally shifting,
and these shifts portend a fundamental change in the demand for housing and community. Four
interrelated demographic trends are underway, which have been dramatically illuminated in the
2000 Census. Each has the potential to help us move from suburban sprawl and traffic nightmares
to reinvigorated urban centers with high quality of life.

Personal Transportation Survey, African Americans, Asians, and Hispanics are all more likely

Immigration

The most notable finding of the 2000 Census was the unequivocal diversity added to our nation as
a result of immigration, principally from Latin America and Asia. Cities have traditionally been
magnets for immigrants, and at least since World War II, most minorities have lived in cities.
Although an increasing percentage of immigrants are choosing to live in the suburbs, and there is a

suggests that baby boomers have fueled much of the downtown population growth over the
past decade, as they seek smaller homes in locations with a greater mix of amenities.
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Marketing experts and demographers alike have trumpeted the preferences of Echo

Boomers (aged 24 34) for exciting, dense, urban locations. Indeed, the much-publicized
growth of new economy cities like San Francisco and Austin has been ascribed to their
attrac-tiveness to highly skilled young workers. A recent national study found that 57 percent
of this generation preferred small lot housing and that 53 percent felt that an easy walk to
3

stores was an extremely important determinant in housing and neighborhood choice. In his
influential book The Rise of the Creative Class, economic development expert Richard
Florida makes a com-pelling case that the economically successful regions of the future will
be those that attract tech-nology and talent, and that creative workers are attracted to cities
because they are centers of innovation. Florida notes, however, that this was not just a
phenomenon involving young people and baby boomers. He also finds a clear correlation
between child-friendly cities and creative hubs.
Nonfamily Households

significant trend toward minority migration to the suburbs, demographer William Frey projects that

The 2000 Census found that nonfamily households comprise 31.9 percent of all American

most of the immigrant population will continue to be concentrated in denser urban locations.

households, a higher percentage than married couples with children at home, a group that
now comprises only 29.5 percent of households. Ross and Dunning found that single adults
with no children, and households of two or more adults with no children, were most likely to
live in urban locations. These less conventional households are another force for change.

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THE NEW TRANSIT TOWN

13

THE SCALE OF THE MARKET

These demographic trends add up to a growing market for smaller homes, town homes, and
homes on smaller lots in vibrant walkable neighborhoodsall characteristics of transit-oriented
development. In a recent study, Dowell Myers at the University of Southern California estimated
that between 30 percent and 55 percent of the demand for new housing would be for residences in

FIG. 1.1

New Starts Projects

dense, walkable neighborhoods. He and his coauthor, Elizabeth Gearin, also found that almost 25
percent of the aging baby boomer demand was for town homes in the city.
The Transit Boom

In the past decade, new fixed guideway transit (light-rail, commuter-rail, subway, or busway) lines
have opened all over the country, evenand especiallyin cities that traditionally have not had
much transit service. New light-rail systems have opened in San Diego, San Jose, Sacramento,
Portland, Salt Lake City, Denver, St. Louis, and Dallas, often to better than forecasted ridership. At
the same time, there has been a resurgence of interest in better performing bus services, with
international successes like Ottawa, Canada, and Curitiba, Brazil, accompanied by experiments

FIG. 1.2

with dedicated busways in Pittsburgh and rapid bus demonstrations in a number of cities around

New Starts Projects

the country. The result has been a huge increase in interest in transit system construction, with
virtually every metropolitan area planning some kind of fixed guideway project.
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(Source: Federal Transit

These are added to a large number of existing stations around the country. According to the

American Public Transit Association, the station inventory includes twenty commuter-rail agen-cies
with 1,153 stations; fourteen heavy-rail agencies with 1,009 stations; twenty-six light-rail tran-sit
agencies with 651 stations (with numerous additional street stops that dont meet the station
definition); and fourteen other rail transit agencies with 71 stations (including monorails, cable cars,
etc.). This count excludes the intercity bus industry, which serves over 4,000 communities, and
Amtrak, which serves about 500 stations. Overall there appear to be about 2,400 transit and
intercity rail stations together with a wide variety of intercity bus locations.
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The future demand for new transit starts projects appears tremendous. In an attempt to gauge

the potential supply of transit, we reviewed the Federal Transit Administrations ( FTA) 2003 Annual
Report on New Starts. This report to Congress lists all pending and proposed proj-ects around the
country and makes recommendations about funding allocations for specific projects. As of 2003,
twenty-five new start projects have full funding grant agreements with the

FTA that commit the agency to a specified amount of federal support. These include

projects in Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Fort Lauderdale, Los
Angeles, Memphis, New Jersey, Pittsburgh, Portland, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, San
Diego, San Francisco, San Juan, and Washington, D.C. Figure 1.1 depicts these

pending a grant agreement, in final design, or in preliminary engineering. Figure 1.2 depicts the

commitments, which will add 131 new stations to the existing inventory.

new transit start projects already in the federal approval and funding process. On top of these

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In addition to the projects in the full funding grant agreement category, FTA is monitoring an

additional fifty-two projects that are in some stage of the federal approval process, either

projects, there are an additional 151 new starts that were named in the last federal transportation
authorization, the so-called TEA-21 legislation, for some level of federal funding.

THE NEW TRANSIT TOWN

AN INTRODUCTION TO TRANSIT-ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT

14
15

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Of course many of these projects will never be built, and should never be built, as the demand or

and from the case studies a set of practical lessons about the pursuit of development

local financing capacity may not be there. The FTA has adopted a rigorous screening process to

around transit in key subject areas.

ration the relatively small amount of federal transit funds among the huge number of competi-tors

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and, fortunately, one of the key screening criteria is consistency with local land-use plans. As a

TODs promise of generating outcomes that are of lasting value to both communities and indi-

result, many transit proposals now include some evidence of transit-supportive existing land use,

viduals, and of capturing value for the many actors involved in the process, including regions,

policies and future patterns. This provides both evidence of the degree to which ideas about

cities, transit agencies, developers, community groups, and families. We are building toward

transit-oriented development are taking hold and also evidence of the need for improved practices

standards for TOD and toward the creation of a standard real estate product that can be

and standards, without which many of the new systems may fail to meet ridership projections.

brought to scale. This is very much a work in progress, and our hope is that by suggesting

Throughout, our goal is to provide a set of tools to allow practitioners to begin to deliver on

directions for this work to follow we can set the stage for both continuous improvement and a

TODs Role in Meeting Metropolitan Growth Projections

more organized process of documentation and evaluation of the practice of TOD.

Clearly, transit-oriented development has the potential to fulfill much of the unmet demand for

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more compact development that is expected to arise in the next decade. One analyst has

begins to set standards for key aspects of TOD. It is followed by a series of case studies that eval-

attempted to answer a different question: Could TOD accommodate all metropolitan area

uate the practice of TOD around the country at both the project and the regional scale.

growth? Writing soon after Peter Calthorpes Next American Metropolis was published, and

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look-ing at actual growth patterns in the 1980s, Anthony Downs of the Brookings Institution

it to the structure of metropolitan regions with a typology that addresses issues of scale, tran-

used a methodology that assumed a 2,000-foot radius around transit stations, applied

sit service standards, land-use mix and density, and urban design characteristics. The goals

Calthorpes den-sity guidelines, and assumed the construction of radial transit systems in

are to embed TOD within the metropolitan structure that is emerging in this auto-oriented and

each metropolitan area. He found that it might have been feasible to accommodate all of the

postmodern era and to relate it to the neighborhoods in which the transit stops are located.

population growth of the 1980s into combined TODs if large amounts of resources had been

>

devoted to building a rapid transit system linking them together. Of course he notes that this

agencies, community groups, for-profit developers and lenders, and nonprofit community

would have been tremendously expensive, might have engendered resistance due to the

developersand their roles. The chapter also examines some emerging ways of addressing the

higher density develop-ment, and hence concludes, TODs should be viewed as building

difficult challenge of delivering a project that meets agency and developer goals in terms of return

blocks that could be used to handle some significant part of growth.

and value capture while also achieving what may be very different goals for the community.

>

Many metropolitan planning agencies are now conducting scenario-based regional

>

The book is divided into two parts. The first part seeks to define the state of the practice and

We begin in the following chapter by seeking to refine the definition of TOD and to relate

Chapter 3 discusses the different actors involved in the TOD processincluding cities, tran-sit

Chapter 4 examines the regulatory environment for transit-oriented development

plan-ning studies, and often one of the scenarios involves some degree of TOD. Salt

and dis-cusses the different approaches that cities have taken toward planning and

Lake Citys Envision Utah project and Chicagos Metropolis 2020 effort are examples of

zoning around tran-sit. It takes a case study approach, analyzing a representative

the ways that regions are attempting to get away from using trend-based forecasts and

variety of transit-oriented codes in a variety of metropolitan settings.

are using new approaches to mobility and development to meet a part of the demand

>

for new housing gener-ated by population growth. Maturing our approach to TOD will

development finance process for TOD and as a guide for people who need to confront the

help these ambitious regional planning efforts become more than regional visions.

challenges of financ-ing walkable, mixed-use development around transit in a fragmented

Concerned with the financing of TOD, chapter 5 serves both as a primer on the

regulatory and institution-al environment. Research for this chapter included exhaustive

The Plan for This Book

interviews with developers, city and transit agency staff, and lenders and investors.

The plan for this book is to provide the reader with both an orientation into the practice of TOD and

>

an evaluation of the first generation of projects emerging around the country. We seek to learn from

for more work to determine specific parking and trip generation standards for TOD. Key

the efforts of the pioneers by presenting case studies of noteworthy efforts. At the same time, we

problems are the accommodation of parking and the fact that parking standards for

have attempted to draw from the literature, from interviews with practitioners,

auto-oriented developments are being applied to transit-oriented projects without offsets

Chapter 6 looks at both traffic and parking issues, documenting the very real need

for reduced auto use. Of course, this drives up the cost of these projects.

16

AN INTRODUCTION TO TRANSIT-ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT

THE NEW TRANSIT TOWN

17
TABLE 1.1 PROFILE OF CASE STUDY PROJECTS

CASE STUDIES

PROJECT

DEVELOPER

DATE
COMPLETED

LAND USES

TRANSIT

FINANCING

PARKING

Arlington County
Virginia

County plans
Various private

As of 2000

17.9Msq.ft.office
3.0M sq.ft. retail
21,581 housing units

Heavy-rail
Bus

Public/Private

(see pg. 142,

Mockingbird Station
Dallas, TX

Ken Hughes

2000

214,000 sq.ft. residential

Light-rail
Bus

Private

1.0/bedroom
3.23/1,000 gross sq.ft.
retail

24 units/acre

Addison Circle
Addison, TX

Columbus Realty
Trust
Post Properties

Phase 3
in 2002

1,800 apts.
86 condos
6 town homes
115,000 sq.ft. retail
342,000 sq.ft. office

Bus
Light-rail planned

Public/Private

Phase 1: 1/bedroom
Phase 2: 0.3/bedroom
Phase 3: 1/bedroom
3.7 spaces/1,000
gross sq.ft. retail
3.2 spaces/1,000
gross sq.ft. office

100 units/acre

Mercado
San Diego, CA

MAAC
Landgrant
Richard Juarez

Apartments
in 1993

138,000 sq.ft. residential

Light-rail
Bus

Public/Private
Affordable
LIHTC

1.5 /unit
3.5/1,000 gross
sq.ft. retail

32.7 units/acre

Lindbergh
Atlanta, GA

Carter & Assoc.

Phase 1
in 2003

388,000 sq.ft. residential

Heavy-rail
Bus

Public/Private

2.2/1,000 sq.ft. commercial

Ohlone Court
Santa Clara County

Bridge Housing

1997

135 units

Light-rail
Bus

Public/Private
Affordable

1.5/1.8/2.0 spaces
for 1/2/3 bedrooms

22.1 units/acre

Ohlone-Chynoweth
Commons
Santa Clara County

Eden Housing

2001

194 units

Light-rail

Public/Private

same

26.6 units/acre

Bus

Affordable

1 Pearl Avenue
Santa Clara County

Cilker Orchards

Light-rail
Bus

Private

same

41.4 units/acre

Chapters 7 through 11 examine the state of the practice around the country through a
series of case studies. Each case study examines in detail one or two projects in a
specific region, seeking always to place that project within a regional context. The goal
is to document the history of the effort, to report the outcomes, and to draw lessons that
are applicable elsewhere. In selecting case studies, we consciously tried for diversity in
both geographic spread and maturity of the transit system and the project.
>

The case study in chapter 7 looks at a county in the Washington, D.C., region that has

doggedly pursued an economic development strategy centered around transit . Thirty years
ago, Arlington County, Virginia, was an inner suburb threatened by leapfrog suburban
development at the fringes, and declining neighborhoods at the core. The county chose to
use the new Metrorail system as a focus for development and density; it has succeeded in
growing popula-tion, real estate value, and the tax base, as well as achieving dramatic
transportation and envi-ronmental results. Our case study shows that the progress has not
been without its challenges, particularly with respect to urban design, walkability, affordability,
and historic preservation; still, the county has continued to confront these challenges,
presenting a template for consistent local government action.
>

Chapter 8 focuses on two successful projects in Dallas: the Mockingbird Station

develop-ment near Southern Methodist University, and the Addison Circle development,
a striking new downtown for the suburban community of Addison. The popularity of the

2003

182 units

RESIDENTIAL
DENSITY

new rail system in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex has generated a huge amount of
interest in mixed-use walkable development, from urban neighborhoods like Dallass
Uptown and West End to suburban proj-ects in Addison and Plano.
>

The case study presented in chapter 9 discusses transit-oriented development in Atlanta, a

region whose economic success appeared threatened by runaway sprawl, traffic congestion, and
air pollution. In an encouraging example of corporate leadership, BellSouth decided to concentrate
its many suburban facilities within walking distance of three transit stops on the MARTA system.
Our case study looks at the challenges faced by MARTA, the city, BellSouth, the developer, and the
pro-jects neighbors as they attempted to accommodate this huge project at the Lindbergh station.

>

Chapter 10, the case study of the Ohlone-Chynoweth project in the heart of Californias

Silicon Valley, focuses on transits role in siting affordable housing, particularly in a booming
regional economy where housing prices are skyrocketing. The case study illuminates the
impor-tant role that local governments and nonprofit community developers can play in
ensuring affordable housing is located near transit, as well as the challenges to ensuring that
transit neighborhoods are mixed income in character. The chapter also looks at some of the
design challenges faced when integrating transit into a suburban context and attempting to
balance the stations role as both a place and a node.

>

Chapter 11 tells the story of Barrio Logan, a bootstraps effort at community revitalization in an

inner-city Latino neighborhood near San Diegos downtown. The case study shows that exist-ing
affordable housing tools can be successfully used to create affordable transit-oriented hous-ing,
but that the tools for commercial development in lower-income neighborhoods and com-munities of
color are less well developed. In particular, our review finds that attracting commer-cial developers
and retail tenants to lower-income neighborhoods is complicated when the proj-ects incorporate
nonstandard features like walkability and transit orientation. This finding sup-ports the need for
more standard transit-oriented retail products as well as the importance of sustained community
involvement and community capacity.
>

Table 1.1 lists each case study and provides key details about development and transit.

>

Chapter 12 attempts to draw some conclusions about the potential for transit-

oriented development. It calls for a continued effort to set performance standards and
argues that the benefits of such an undertaking will be profound and widespread.

THE NEW TRANSIT TOWN

NOTES

This section is based upon work by Dena Belzer and Gerald Autler for the Center for Transit-Oriented Development, published

as Transit-Oriented Development: Moving from Rhetoric to Reality, by the Great American Station Foundation and
the Brookings Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2002), at
http://www.transittown.org.
2

This section is drawn from a chapter I wrote for Sustainable Planet, edited by Juliet Schor and Betsy Taylor (Boston:
Beacon Press, 2002).

Federal Highway Administration. 2001. Moving Ahead: The American Public Speaks about Roadways and Their
Communities. Washington, D.C.: Federal Highway Administration.

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