Reports: Transit/transit-oriented dev.

Chapter 7 of the New Urbanism Best Practices Guide
Transit-oriented development (TOD) has proliferated in the past several years, and the public sector has become increasingly adept at organizing it. Most TOD focuses on rail transportation, which needs a high population density within walking distance of the station — at least 14 dwelling units per acre, one source suggests. TOD should include amenities such as a park, stores, schools, and trees if it’s to attract residents. This chapter includes material from Hank Dittmar and Shelley Poticha’s The New Transit Town presenting the land-use mix, minimum housing density, housing types, scale, regional connectivity, transit modes, frequency of service, and US examples of six kinds of TOD: urban downtown, urban neighborhood, suburban center, suburban neighborhood, neighborhood transit zone, and commuter town center.

New Urban News Technical Page by Andres Duany, Michael Morrissey, and Patrick Pinnell

TOD or transit-oriented development is a complex topic that can nevertheless be demystified.

Chapter 21 of the New Urbanism Best Practices Guide

Urbanism can greatly benefit the environment — by concentrating development in compact patterns that use natural resources more efficiently. These patterns make it possible to preserve more land as natural, agricultural, or open space and to reduce auto emissions, energy use, and stormwater runoff. This chapter looks at New Urbanism’s rapidly advancing practices in sustainability and the environment.

New Urban News Technical Page by Andres Duany, Michael Morrissey, and Patrick Pinnell

The higher the initial cost of a given public transit technology, the less likely a system using it will be built. From the outset, this tough reality must be recognized. The last Technical Page considered the higher levels of technology and infrastructure investment: in descending order heavy rail, light rail, streetcars, and trolleys. All require fixed rail, a layer of supporting infrastructure, and, in most cases, dedicated rights of way. Consequently many communities will be either unable or unwilling to build them.

New Urban News Article with images, 10/1/2009
As the recession bottoms out, planners are looking how to leave room for moderate-income residents in walkable neighborhoods.
Once the nation’s shaken economy recovers, real estate analysts expect a growing number of urban neighborhoods to become so expensive that people of modest income will be priced out of them. This would undermine socioeconomic diversity, which has long been a new urbanist ideal.

New Urban News Technical Page by Andres Duany, Michael Morrissey, and Patrick Pinnell

What is the difference between New Urbanism and traditional, “old” urbanism? The answer has to do with one big systemic thing — the rise of suburbia — and with one ubiquitous technical thing — the response to suburbia’s technological icon and instrument, the automobile.

New Urban News Article with images, 12/1/2005
Forum planners focus on improving transit service and creating multimodal thoroughfare designs.
The Mississippi Gulf region consists of 11 cities, strung out in a single line along the coast, a condition that would appear to support transit. Yet the area is one of the most car-dependent in the US, planners say, with 95 percent of workers commuting via autos and only 0.5 percent via buses, the only transit choice that was available prior to the hurricane.

New Urban News Article with images and sidebar, 10/1/2008
The US lending crisis has cut homebuilding nearly everywhere, but walkable, transit-oriented developments are suffering least.
Housing construction across the US has dropped to its lowest volume since 1991, and many new urbanist developments are seeing their sales fall off. The latest Standard & Poors/Case Shiller Home Price Indices, released at the end of September, show that prices of existing single-family houses in 20 large metropolitan areas sank by a stunning 19.5 percent in the past two years.

New Urban News Article with images and sidebar, 1/1/2009
Road diets, a streetcar to the airport, and transit-oriented development are all being pursued by North Carolina’s largest city.
It wasn’t terribly long ago that Charlotte, North Carolina, was a typical Sunbelt city, happy with highways, office parks, and cul-de-sacs. But over the past several years, Charlotte’s Department of Transportation (CDOT), with support from elected officials, has started adopting techniques associated with smart growth and New Urbanism.

New Urban News Technical Page by Andres Duany, Michael Morrissey, and Patrick Pinnell

Within the urban center and core zones uses mix densely, and the value of land is such that the setback of facades from property lines often diminishes to zero. Private and public realms abut directly. Consequently the details of their design assume heightened importance in the continual negotiation of how each influences comfortable use of the other.