Hank Dittmar is president and chief executive officer of Reconnecting America, and former executive director of the Surface Transportation Policy Project.

Gloria Ohland is a professional journalist and senior editor with Reconnecting America; she was formerly Southern California director of the Surface Transportation Policy Project.

Reconnecting America is a national organization that seeks to build connections between and among transporation networks and the regions and communities they serve in order to generate lasting public and private returns, improve economic efficiency, and give consumers greater choice.

An introduction to oriented development

Census figures for the year 2000 and research by the Brookings Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy and the Fannie Mae Foundation show that this urban rebirth is driven by demographic changes, including the rise in immigration, the aging of baby boomers, and the increase in nonfamily households. These changes add up to a growing market for smaller homes, and the increased popularity of cities. Urban centers are once again seen as attractive, lively places in which to live and work, and as hubs of intellectual and creative capacity.

> The second, and equally powerful, trend is the continuing growth and emerging maturity of America's suburbs, many of which are struggling to become cities in their own right. Suburban areas are increasingly diverse in race, ethnicity, and income, and are increasingly experiencing the pangs of rapid growth. Suburbs need to diversify land uses in order to build more solid revenue bases; they need to create urban centers and address the problem of traffic congestion along overtaxed suburban arterials. In addition, they need to respond to the desires of many suburban residents who have chosen not to move back into cities but who nevertheless want some urban amenities in their towns. In short, suburbs are increasingly being challenged to become more than bedroom communities.

> The third trend is a renewed interest in rail travel and rail investment. Virtually every major city in America is planning some form of urban rail or busway system, and states are joining together to plan and build high-speed rail systems linking metropolitan regions in the West, Midwest, Northeast, and South. In fact, the competition for limited federal funds is so intense that the wait for federal mass transit funding for a new project is estimated at almost fifty years. New rail or rapid bus systems have opened in the past ten years in such nontraditional places as Dallas, Denver, San Diego, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake City, with substantial system expansions underway in virtually every traditional rail city.

> At the convergence of these three trends is the potential for a substantial market for a new form of walkable, mixed-use urban development around new and existing rail or rapid bus stations. Changing demographics are resulting in a need for the diversification of real estate products, and the type of development known variously as transit villages or transit-oriented development is beginning to receive serious attention in markets as diverse as the San Francisco Bay Area, suburban New Jersey, Atlanta, Dallas, and Chicago. These transit-oriented developments have the potential to provide residents with improved quality of life and reduced household transportation expenses, while providing the region with stable mixed-income neighborhoods that reduce environmental impacts and provide real alternatives to traffic congestion. New research clearly shows that this kind of development can reduce household transportation costs, thereby making housing more affordable.

> Sadly, our review of the projects that are emerging across the country reveals that many of the first phases of these new "transit towns" fail to meet these important objectives. Somewhere between the conceptualization and opening day, many projects end up becoming fairly traditional suburban developments that are simply transit-adjacent. Issues include unfriendly zoning codes and parking ordinances. Difficulties in dealing with the institutional complexities are also prevalent, with the chief confusion being the relative roles of local jurisdictions and transit agencies. Financing is difficult as well, with a lack of understanding about how best to finance mixed-use projects, and a lack of intermediary assistance for nonprofits and localities that want to pursue TOD projects that include affordable housing and involve minority-owned businesses.

> The amount of hype around TOD far exceeds the progress to date, with many transit proponents selling new transit investments on the basis of future land-use changes. The result has been that transit opponents have begun to deride TOD as a failure by critiquing the performance of the flawed projects discussed above. This presents a particular challenge for the transit industry, because the long-term success of many projects depends on development trends over which the industry has, at best, only indirect control.

> This book is an attempt to bring clarity to the debate by placing projects in a historical continuum, by creating a performance-oriented definition, and by analyzing and confronting the challenges that have been encountered. The research, which has been sponsored by Reconnecting America through its national Center for Transit-Oriented Development, is an initial step toward bringing TOD to scale as a recognized real estate product in the United States.

> Over the past two years, we have been engaged in a collaborative effort with the Center for Neighborhood Technology, the Congress for the New Urbanism, Strategic Economics, and the Alliance for Transportation Research Institute to answer the question: What will it take to bring TOD to scale in a way that captures its potential economic and environmental advantages? Our work has involved a number of methods of inquiry, including a literature review, practitioner interviews, regional workshops, case studies, geographic information system analysis of travel survey and census data, and the evaluation of existing projects.

> We seek first to understand the challenges faced, then to document the state of the TOD practice, and finally to assemble the resources necessary to assist cities, transit operators, and community groups who wish to undertake these kinds of TOD projects. In particular, we review the first generation of projects, document the progress made in defining the field, and attempt to advance the practice by defining principles to guide the next generation of projects being planned all over the country.

> In our view, successful TOD needs to be mixed-use, walkable, location-efficient development that balances the need for sufficient density to support convenient transit service with the scale of the adjacent community. We intend to develop techniques to help assure that TOD...