Planning and conservation › Land and development › Transit-oriented development
Discover how Metro is helping spark vibrant downtowns and main streets through public/private partnerships, investments and incentives in key development projects located near transit.
The region's long-range plan, the 2040 Growth Concept, calls for the region to use existing urban land more efficiently to protect farms, forests and natural areas located on the urban fringe. Specifically, the plan calls for substantial amounts of the region's growth to occur in medium- to high-density mixed-use, walkable urban centers and corridors linked by high quality transit service. While this approach appeals to many citizens, public officials, planners and innovative developers, the creation of mixed-use, higher density districts has not been widely embraced by the development community, largely due to economic infeasibility. Metro's Transit-Oriented Development Program aims to provide built examples of transit-oriented development projects and to demonstrate the potential of public-private partnerships for making great communities.
Metro's Transit-Oriented Development Program has contributed to many of the regions' successful transit-oriented developments and has acquired key opportunity sites at transit stations. Through active engagement in the design and construction of real projects, the program has helped identify and remove obstacles to the creation of transit villages, main streets and mixed-used urban centers envisioned by the 2040 Growth Concept.
In 1998, Metro's Transit-Oriented Development Program was the first in the nation to receive authorization to use federal transportation funding to specifically acquire land for redevelopment adjacent to a light rail station. This authorization set the stage for Department of Transportation acceptance of the close relationship between development patterns and travel behavior. Other innovations include:
The Transit-Oriented Development Program provides financial incentives and uses public/private partnerships to enhance the economic feasibility of higher density mixed-use projects served by transit. The program uses site control and requests for proposals and qualifications to engage a private development partner or purchases a transit-oriented development easement on projects eligible for program funding. The program continues to build capacity of the private sector to develop projects that meet regional planning objectives while demonstrating to the public that the future they envisioned is indeed possible, and is happening.
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This region is admired across the nation for its innovative approach to planning for the future. Our enviable quality of life can be attributed in no small measure to our stubborn belief in the importance of thinking ahead.
Learn how station area typology systems are being used to guide and foster transit-oriented development in a presentation from Reconnecting America's Centers for Transit-Oriented Development. Download presentation
