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Reverse Zone, weblog on urban planning, sustainability, and technology.
Martin Laplante
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TOD Mindset Moving Away From Pedestrian-friendly Focus
An article in
ArchNewsNow
makes some very odd and scary predictions about the future of Transit-Oriented Development (TOD).
The article talks about a mixed-use condo project in Clayton, Missouri, just west of St. Louis. As the picture (DeStefano + Partners) shows, the project is dominated by a 26-story condominium tower, with a multi-level parking garage and retail. Is this pedestrian-friendly? It looks significantly auto-oriented to me. The picture hides the highway and surface parking lots that surround the site. Environmentally sound? My paper on calculating the optimal housing mix and density for TOD gives some numerical background to why I agree with the Congress for New Urbanism that a diversity of housing forms is key, something that the current LEED-ND/Neighborhood Development pilot program does not sufficiently capture.
But the article then apparently relays this prediction by the project designer:
Current trends in TOD are expanding to include more flexible concepts. Transit-Adjacent Developments (TAD) - including Lindbergh City Center in Atlanta - are adjacent to transit systems, but step away from traditional TOD mindsets like making public spaces the focus of building orientation and neighborhood activity; creating pedestrian-friendly street networks that directly connect local destinations; and providing a mix of housing types and densities.What a dreadful thought! The current mindset focuses too much on public spaces, pedestrian-friendly streets, connections to local destinations and diversity of housing choices, according to some. Apparently this obsession on the human beings who will inhabit these projects interferes with what their developers want to build. Sadly, their prediction may well be right.
Tags: Urban Planning Urban Design Walkable LEED LEED-ND