New Transit Town - Best Practices In Transit-Oriented Development (03) by Dittmar, Hank [Paperback (2003)]

by Ditmar

New Transit Town - Best Practices In Transit-Oriented Development (03) by Dittmar, Hank [Paperback (2003)]

Genres: Urban Planning, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published December 1, 2003

Reviews

[Dameon Launert · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book inspires me to be an urban planner next life.

Transit-oriented development (TOD) is so obviously beneficially to society, and automobile-oriented development is so obviously inefficient for communities and environmentally damaging, that regionally-planned TOD should be the standard.

[Michael Lewyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, as you might guess from the title, is about attempts to create mixed-use developments near transit stations. Some of the projects profiled were in suburbs or automobile-oriented cities, and as a result ran into more difficulties than I would have expected: for example, retail may be difficult to finance when there are not yet enough residents to support it, and parking creates a variety of problems, When planners propose small amounts of parking, neighbors complain because they fear parking will spill over onto their streets. But when they propose large amounts of parking, more sophisticated neighbors fear that the parking will mean more cars and more traffic. Surface parking blights the landscape, but underground garages are more expensive. Where streets are wide and car-oriented, cities must decide whether to pay for improved infrastructure (such as street trees and widened sidewalks) to improve walkability.

Generally, I thought this book was a bit complex for the average layperson; my impression is that its intended audience was practicing urban planners and maybe the occasional graduate student.