TRANSIT RICH DEVELOPMENT Alan Hart AIA MAIBC AAA There is only one way to reduce congestion and get people out of their cars: design the places where people live around the patterns of their lives; give them multiple mobility choices to fulfill their daily needs walking, bicycling, and as many modes of transit as possible. The use of the car as the dominant form of transportation has many environmental negatives pollution, sprawl, runoff but equally damaging is its side effect of removing the life from our public places. Most European cities are blessed with a lively public realm, often a pedestrian promenade or a public square that forms the natural center of urban life. Despite cultural differences between American and European countries, the fundamental human instinct of community is universal. How many North American cities offer this quality of experience? Very few. How can we restore our urban environments to be appealing places that support our lifestyle? Create Transit Rich Development. There has been much discussion in recent years about Transit Oriented Development, or TOD. Over the past two decades, municipal governments and transit agencies have been strong advocates of this form of development because it increases ridership on transit lines and reduces the need for roadway improvements. King County, for example, created a formal TOD policy in 1998 to facilitate the development of transit supportive land uses and Burrard Station / Discovery Park People s priorities are the most important driver in the planning process for cities. Creating a quality environment for people is paramount and must be considered before anything else in order to achieve a lively and sustainable public realm. First we consider LIFE, then we consider SPACE, then we consider BUILDINGS. Planning and design solutions should aim to enrich lifestyle. - Jan Gehl activities. The KCTOD program has the specific objective of identifying and preparing future TOD sites in King County s park-and-ride system. In North America, TOD usually develops around some kind of existing transit amenity like a park-and-ride lot, a bus loop, or a rail station. Traditional crossroads are natural places for nodes of development and interchange between different modes of transportation. Too often however, TOD is designed with the transit hub as its central focus. Rather than creating places for people, it creates places for transportation that people happen to use. Enlightened European urban designer Jan Gehl talks about essential measurements of open space - spatial definition and connectivity to make public spaces safe for movement, repose and activities on the street, and the need to design places for adaptability over time. This means that livable urban spaces are primarily human-oriented, with transit playing an essential but supportive role. Transit Rich Development is about creating places that are served with many mobility choices, but not dominated by them. In Transit Rich Development, the car is just another choice. 2
What if we thought of open space and streetscape as a precious commodity? Gehl s work illustrates clearly the creation of momentum in people s acceptance of and pride in their community by investing in the quality and qualities of the spaces between buildings. What would happen if we invested in our public realm to create rich, transit-served communities? And how is this achieved, i.e. what differentiates TRD from other forms of dense urban development? What are the tools that planners, governments, and designers can use to create Transit Rich Development? PLAN IT Tie land use planning to transit planning. Create compact, mixeduse communities, balancing all transit requirements and integrating them into the community s planning goals. Don t allow transit to drive the form of development. This process should be a cooperative effort between municipal planners, transit agencies, community groups, and private development. Proactive communities will ensure that a land use and development plan is in place even before the arrival of a transit facility. This assures that the community s desire for a mix of housing types that will serve its population at all stages of life can be provided for; communities of this type are appealing, diverse, and more stable than those that serve a narrow demographic. HAVE A DREAM The community should articulate an overall vision of what they want, before development design work is started. A vision for their needs and Renovated Granville Station Entrance wants in terms of street life, public realm, community facilities and how they will be served by the various forms of transit should be established through a process that nurtures and facilitates public involvement. This approach often takes the form of station area planning that formulates a framework within which the developer can, using discretion and flexibility, design the development so that it is both acceptable and defensible to the community. This advance planning reduces the risk for developers and allows greater predictability during the design approval process. It also ensures that the public environment and adjacent developments will be coordinated and of the same quality, further promoting buyer confidence.
WEAVE IT IN Locate transit so that it integrates into the fabric of a community. The finer the urban fabric grain, the more measured and integrated the transit solution must be. The faster and greater the capacity of transit the more it should be considered adjacent to, rather than at the center of, pedestrian oriented space. Where the urban fabric is evolving or new developments are being considered the scale of transit solutions must be especially considered to prevent compromising pedestrian-oriented spaces. This transit scaling can be achieved by using street oriented bus strategies rather than bus loops, by locating LRT transit stations adjacent to (not at the center of) active urban spaces, and by avoiding park and ride facilities as a solution for transit integration. Ensure that transit is just one part of the overall public experience by using the scale of transit to fit the grain of the urban fabric that exists or that is desired. UN-PARK THE STREET Reduce the effects of the car on the public realm by minimizing the amount of land devoted to vehicle parking. Covered or underground parking will diminish the impact of the car on on-street and offstreet environments. Use market analysis and education to develop creative parking strategies that separate the purchase of parking spaces from residential units, share parking with commercial needs, or reduce the need for overall vehicle ownership. At developments around the Vancouver BC Skytrain stations, one key selling point is that families can get by with one less car. Does anyone like to walk anymore? Yes, Americans love to drive to places to walk. - Henry Stephen Markus, TOD Advocate website Kalistrada Lid from Pike Place Market to the Seattle Aquarium 4
INSTILL ACTIVITY Focus on street orientation of activities. The development model used in Vancouver requires investment in retail space before the market is established, creating a high number of street level entrances. This animates public places and creates a natural form of surveillance and personal safety, i.e. the eyes on the street. SHARE THE ROAD Share the street with as many types of uses and modes of transportation as possible. Provide high quality pedestrian and cycling facilities that are safe, accessible and convenient. JUST AROUND THE CORNER Burrard Station Create complete communities with shops and other services within convenient walking distances. Invest in schools, daycare and other community facilities to promote diverse and varied income and age groups. These investments should be made up-front, using financial and government incentives to create these for the broader community in combination with transit investment. At the Roundhouse Community Centre in Vancouver s former Expo Lands, the building was conceived and programmed using input from adjacent communities to build a user base before the surrounding new neighborhood was constructed. This provided a natural focal point for the neighborhood and gave the facility the sense of having always been there. MEASURED BEAUTY The best form of transit is simply being there. - Amory Lovins Use both poetry and mathematics to support TRD goals. It is important to create an aesthetic vision for a place, but equally important are the tax structures, regulatory plans, zoning codes, utilities, and technical analysis that are steeped in metrics and measurements. The resourceful use of hard technical data is exemplified by using Building Information Modeling to illustrate development concepts and support real-time public input. Good information, as early in the envisioning process as possible, leads to informed decision-making by all stakeholders.
EVENT-BUILDING Think of Transit Rich Development in Kenneth Frampton s terms as instrument rather than monument. Good TRD does not consist of stand-alone buildings with arbitrary spaces in between; rather, the spaces in between fulfill the vision of place creation, and the buildings serve as frames and backdrops for the life that these places support. Good urban spaces borrow from or extend existing adjacent communities. On the former Expo Lands in Vancouver, this was successfully achieved by extending the existing street grid into the new development to create natural connections from old to new. It is also important to create the public realm as a string of connective open spaces so that flow and movement are natural and continuous. ROBUST FLEXIBILITY The Hub at Broadway and Commercial Create a robust architecture that is flexible for change in uses over time. Part of the appeal of European spaces is the depth of history and the memory of buildings that have served many uses over decades and centuries. By creating new buildings that have versatile construction types, floor heights, mechanical servicing strategies, fenestration layouts, and structural grids we can achieve the same memorable qualities as our collective experience of places grows over time. The question then arises: How do we know if the Transit Rich Development is successful and fulfilling its goals for lively streetscapes and integrated development? A good measure is a test we call Grandma, Garbage and Pizza : if a place is accessible and safe, if it contains a diverse population, if it meets practical building operation requirements, if it provides clear wayfinding, and if it is pedestrian and transit-rich, then it is a successful sustainable place to live. 6