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Executive Summary Light rail in the West Corridor presents an incredible opportunity for transit-oriented development to leverage market momentum for new investment and community building. A focus on TOD will support growth near new transit sta­tions, enhance access to opportunity, preserve and enhance the supply of a range of housing choices, reduce the combined costs of housing and transportation, and support walking and biking to stations. However, implementing TOD along the West Corridor will not be a quick or simple process. The overall economic conditions in the country are vastly impacting the pace and magnitude of private sector development activity everywhere. This macro-level challenge, combined with some micro-market conditions along the West Corridor, where residential home values are relatively low and the potential value increases related to transit have not yet been realized, indicates that in the near term, most implementation activity in the West Corridor will fall…

A central tenet of urban economics is that households, businesses, and industries compete for urban sites that enjoy accessibility advantages – whether to jobs, labor markets, raw materials, or distributions centers. Transportation investments trigger economic growth by enhancing accessibility, particularly in fast-growing, congested cities. Scholarly work suggests the impacts are more redistributive than generative – that is, new highways, rail investments, and busways shift growth that would have happened regardless from particular corridors and subareas of a region to others as opposed to prompting firm relocations and new business investments in a region. Factors other than transportation, such as “quality of life”, are increasingly influencing location choices of middle-income households and firms that are footloose. Of course, transportation and quality of life are not unrelated – public opinion polls reveal that being stuck in traffic is often first on the list among…

One approach to urban areas emphasizes the existence of certain immutable relationships, such as Zipf's or Gibrat's Law. An alternative view is that urban change reflects individual responses to changing tastes or technologies. This paper examines almost 200 years of regional change in the U.S. and …notes that few, if any, growth relationships remain constant, including Gibrat's Law. Education does a reasonable job of explaining urban resilience in recent decades, but does not seem to predict county growth a century ago. After reviewing this evidence, we present and estimate a simple model of regional change, where education increases the level of entrepreneurship. Human capital spillovers occur at the city level because skilled workers produce more product varieties and thereby increase labor demand. We …nd that skills are associated with growth in productivity or entrepreneurship, not with growth in quality of life, at least outside of theWest. We also …nd that skills seem to…

The growth machine framework maintains that coalitions of elites work together to promote and adopt policies and practices that best serve their economic interests and propel cities toward growth. While numerous scholars have subjected the growth machine to theoretical and empirical tests, we know little about the beliefs and perspectives of individual actors within the growth machine. To address this gap in the literature, the present research uses in-depth interviews to examine the subjective views of one segment of the growth machine—real estate professionals. The findings demonstrate that these practitioners see the exercise of power at the local level to be less coordinated, consensus-driven, and growth-oriented than the growth machine thesis suggests. Specifically, they see their own power and capacity to act to be constrained by four factors: the (re)-election interests of politicians; the professional interests of municipal economic development staff; bureaucratic procedures…

This report describes the key principles for creating successful STCs. These principles will be incorporated into future planning efforts. Many of these principles can be implemented by the City through public improvements. Others will require cooperation from private developers as they construct new buildings and rehabilitate Los Angeles’ existing stock of buildings. In some cases, public/private partnerships may be the most effective way to translate these principles into successful, thriving STCs.

More than 3,000 transit-rich neighborhoods (TRNs) in U.S. metropolitan areas have fixed-guideway transit stations and hundreds more such neighborhoods could be created over the next decade if current plans for new transit systems and stations are realized. Americans are increasingly using transit and showing more interest in living in transit-rich neighborhoods. For neighborhood and equity advocates from Atlanta to Seattle and Minneapolis to Houston, however, this good news is tempered by a growing concern about gentrification and displacement. Will current neighborhood residents, many of them low income and/or people of color, benefit from planned transit stations? Or will they be displaced by wealthier and less diverse residents lured not only by transit but also by the other amenities that come with transit-induced neighborhood revitalization?

The overall purpose of the proposed Walkability Strategy for Edmonton is to develop an integrated set of potential actions to address a range of identified barriers to improving walkability in the city of Edmonton. Edmonton has become a fast-paced urban centre with ‘big city’ advantages, opportunities, and challenges. Like other large centres, the limits of funding, outdated regulatory frameworks, and increasing land mass, as well as the need for sustainable growth and improvements to quality of life, are challenging municipal decision makers to respond with integrated, innovative, and efficient solutions. Initiated by the Walkable Edmonton Committee and funded by Smart Choices and Alberta Health Services, the Walkability Strategy addresses a number of key urban form, infrastructure, and policy and program barriers that are impeding Edmonton from being a more-walkable city.

Boulder has a residential population density greater than Denver – and is 40% more dense than peer cities like Palo Alto, California and Madison, Wisconsin. Still, there are calls by some for much greater density in Boulder. The public debate about increasing Boulder’s density has been emotional and rife with misinformation. A comprehensive analysis of the facts surrounding density and growth in Boulder is desperately needed. This PLAN-Boulder County report examines density and growth from four important aspects: regional transportation, greenhouse gas generation, adequate public services, and affordable housing.