Transit-Oriented Development

City planners have been on the hook for some of the last century's greatest metropolitan mishaps: urban freeways and "slum clearance," arbitrary minimum parking requirements, and land use laws that have left little room for the mingling of uses. Understandably, today's planners are a bit humbled. But when planning directors from some of North America's most progressive cities spoke at City Hall this week about the political challenges that face urban planners, several of them said the field needs to move beyond worrying about past mistakes.

The Congress for the New Urbanism's Project for Transportation Reform summit in Portland, Oregon, has brought together transportation engineers, city planners, and transportation reform advocates to share best practice policies for reforming transportation metrics, funding mechanisms, and regional practices that isolate transportation planning from land-use and growth targets.  The highlight of the first day of the program was Portland itself, as councilors from Portland Metro, one of the only elected municipal planning organizations (MPOs) in the country, elaborated on their multi-disciplinary mission, which seeks to limit development within an urban growth boundary and coordinate transportation, parks and recreation, and solid waste management to achieve a more sustainable city.

Elana linked to this story out of Salt Lake City in the Capitol Hill headline stack this morning, and it's worth everyone's full attention. Derek Jensen reports on what may be the biggest impediment to urbanism of them all: the widespread bias of banks against walkable development.

An eye-opening report recently released by AARP , Reconnecting America and the National Housing Trust identifies the Bay Area as a national leader in placing affordable housing near high-frequency transit, but also points out that tens of thousands of subsidized units are at risk of being lost in the next five years.

Stephen O'Brien has been coaxing an oasis out of a most unlikely environment for a long time: the small green patches at either end of the ground level Mission Street frontage of the Transbay Terminal. He started back in 1958, when the old Key System train tracks that used to bring East Bay electric streetcars to the Transbay Terminal were being torn out. The Transbay Terminal in those days was a crucial commuter hub, bringing passengers from all over the East Bay. If you've ever ridden the F bus from Berkeley to San Francisco, you've ridden on the descendant of the same-lettered streetcar that once transported you from downtown Berkeley to downtown San Francisco just a minute longer than BART does today!

Shelley Poticha, head of the Obama administration's inter-agency sustainable communities push, is so new to the job that the legislation creating her office has yet to be officially approved by Congress -- but she has already hit upon two goals aimed at remaking the way Americans, and their government, view local development.

Adolfo Carrion Jr., director of the White House's new Office of Urban Affairs, today vowed to begin reconnecting Washington with the needs of the nation's cities -- even as he offered few tangible plans for breaking through the morass of the federal bureaucracy and effecting change in the near term.

About two years ago, the Urban Land Institute published Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change, which argued that it will be crucial to build cities in a more compact fashion if the country hopes to avoid substantial growth in vehicle miles traveled and carbon emissions over the next few decades.

Back in the late 1970s, when Washington's Metrorail system first began operating in Arlington County, Virginia, the future of Arlington and other old, inner suburbs was far from certain. Across the Potomac, the District of Columbia was suffering from depopulation, rapidly rising crime rates, and serious fiscal difficulties.