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Smarter growth, smarter property values.

Library of Resources

There are many factors at work that make Zia Station such a perfect site for transit oriented development. We have presented interactive workshops about a variety of topics and present here a number of resources, reports and links related to transportation hubs.

  • Smart Growth

    Smart Growth is the concept of growing in versus out, promoting the idea of infill development in lieu of the trend of the last 50 years or so of “sprawl”.

    “Following the logic of smart growth, when we build new we build in, not out: office buildings, homes, and stores go in the spaces that exist within the areas we’ve already developed, not out on the fringe where they gobble up farmland and countryside. This makes it possible for more people to utilize the infrastructure that currently exists; we spend taxpayer dollars to keep it in working order, rather than build anew. Smart growth is all about efficiency.”
    from “Redrawing the American City,”
    OnEarth Magazine - a publication of the National Resources Defense Council,
    Winter 2010
    http://www.onearth.org/article/redrawing-the-american-city

  • Traffic Evaluation

    As communities have “sprawled” towards the suburbs and exurbs, we have increased our reliance on the automobile and clogged our streets and highways with more and more cars. The traditional approach has been to just build wider roads, accommodating more and more traffic lanes. But to quote a rather humorous analogy:

    “Solving traffic congestion by building bigger roads is like trying to solve obesity by wearing a bigger belt.” -Anonymous

    There has been ongoing research into how we need to better analyze our growing traffic issues, from studies relating to how vehicle trips are assigned in traditional traffic studies to the need to address all modes of travel as we design our streets. The ITE (Institute of Traffic Engineers), has been a key player in spearheading and in some instances authoring studies relating to this issue.

    See the report from the September 2008 issue of “New Urban News” (www.newurbannews.com) and “Designing Walkable Thoroughfares – A Context Sensitive Solution”, produced by ITE and the Congress for New Urbanism, 2010.
    See also: Streets Blog: Making Streets for Walking

  • Transit Oriented Development

    Transit Oriented Development (TOD) is a form of land use and economic development that aims to reduce single-occupant car trips by offering viable alternatives, including walking, bicycling, busses and trains. According to todadvocate.com, the most successful TODs emulate urban planning even in non-urban settings—mixed-use neighborhoods anchored by a commercial center and transportation hub: “The concept includes mixed use, higher density, buildings at the sidewalk, less private and more public open space, smaller blocks, narrow streets and wider sidewalks, street trees and lights, lower parking ratios, shared parking, parking behind buildings, and on-street parallel parking.”

    See http://www.todadvocate.com/todlessons.htm

  • Pedestrian and Bicycle Friendly Environments

    When creating a place that incorporates a variety of mixed uses, from residential to various forms of commercial activity, you are in fact lessening the need for automobile travel. Walking and bicycling become equal, even favorable, modes of travel. The need is great, however, to ensure that walking and biking environments are safe, and, again, the planning practices of the past need to be re-evaluated. Walking and bicycling are healthy alternatives to the car, and recent studies conclude that walkable communities are also healthier for our pocketbooks.

    See “Walking the Walk – How Walkability Raises Home Values in U.S. Cities” (website) (or download the pdf)
    by Joe Cortright for CEOs for Cities, August, 2009.

  • Property Values

    Three recent studies looked at property values at or near transit facilities. Each was commissioned for varying reasons, from looking at the potential of too much gentrification near TODs (see the Mineta report, below), to ways for communities to leverage increased property values as a mechanism for funding transit infrastructure ( see the Center for TOD report, below). The long and short of these rather lengthy technical reports is that properties near or adjacent to transit, particularly multi-modal, tend to increase in value over similar properties.

    Location Premium Effect Transit Type Year
    San Francisco Bay Area, CA
    BART System     		+17% within 500 ft of station Rapid Transit 1979
    San Diego, CA
    San Diego Trolley System    		 +2% within 200 ft of station Light Rail 1992
    Portland, OR
    MAX Light Rail System    		 +10.6% within 1,500 ft of station Light Rail 1993
    Sacramento, CA
    Sacramento Light Rail System    		 +6.2% within 900 ft of station Light Rail 1995
    Santa Clara County, CA
    TA Light Rail    		 ‐10.8 within 900 ft of station Light Rail 1995
    Chicago, IL
    MetraRail Commuter System    		 +20% within 1,000 ft of station Commuter Rail 1997
    St. Louis, MO
    MetroLink Light Rail System    		 +32% within 100 ft of station Light Rail 2004
    Table above from Capturing the Value of Transit (pdf)
    by the Center for Transit Oriented Development - Reconnecting America, 2008

    The Hiawatha Line: Impact on Land Use and Residential Housing Value (pdf)(abstract) by the Center for Transportation Studies, 2010

    Effect of Suburban Transit Oriented Development on Residential Property Values
    by the Mineta Transportation Institute, San Jose State University, 2009.

  • Housing Affordability and Transportation Interface

    In the age of “drive ‘til you qualify” for housing, where we have placed the most affordable homes the furthest away from our other living needs (schools, restaurants, services, etc.), it has become all too apparent that the true cost of home ownership should also include a measure of the associated transportation cost. After analyzing 337 metro regions (over 160,000 neighborhoods) across the nation the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT), in its March 2010 study “Penny Wise Pound Fuelish – New Measures of Housing + Transportation Affordability”demonstrates that the combined cost of housing and transportation places the vast majority of communities in this country beyond the reach of median income households. Seven out of ten communities (69%) are considered affordable under the traditional definition of housing costs at 30% of income. That shrinks, however, to just four out of ten (39%) when both housing and transportation costs are considered and a 45% affordability benchmark is applied.”

  • Shared Parking

    One needs only to observe empty parking lots at various times of the day - apartment complexes during the day and office lots at night - to grasp the premise of shared parking. The concept involves sharing a small percentage of parking spaces between differing, complementary uses, especially when they (the differing uses) are located in close proximity to one another (Mixed Use). The Urban Land Institute has compiled and amended a complete model for evaluating the exact parking relationships between varying uses on a day-to-day, hour-to-hour, and even seasonal basis. (“Shared Parking, Second Edition.”)