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So, as employment in both US and Canadian cities suburbanizes, transit will increasingly serve suburban areas and these suburban areas will increasingly become home to new urbanist developments.
Which metro areas do you think best combine new urbanism and transit oriented development? (preferably using either heavy rail or light-rail as the transit mode).
My top 3
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1)Vancouver: tons of development exists and is cropping up around Skytrain stations. Burnaby, Surrey and Richmond have some really good examples of this.
2)Washington,DC: Arlington, Rockville, Silver Spring and Tysons corner seem to have tons of new urbanism near heavy rail transit. Silver Spring, Bethesda, Alexandria and Hyattsville have lots of transit-proximate development near heavy rail.
3)Toronto: Though it's within the city limits, the North York area of Toronto qualifies as a substantial TOD area. Lots of Mississauga, Brampton and much of the York Region are developed using new urbanism, but they lack heavy rail (or light rail). However, they all have very high frequency bus service and the York Region has Bus Rapid Transit.
Also, I haven't heard people describe suburban development in Metro DC as such before, so I'll say it: I think that much of the style of development in inner suburban DC (say up to 5 miles outside the beltway and a bit further proceeding northwest and west) most resembles that of Metro Vancouver. A few inner suburbs like McLean and Bethesda more resemble the Pennsylvania Main Line, as do the middle ring suburbs of Potomac and North Potomac in Montgomery County and Woodmoore in Prince George's county. Most of the middle and outer suburbs resemble sunbelt development in the noncoastal southeastern United States (suburban Atlanta and Dallas, for e.g.); middle and outer suburbia include western Fairfax County, Northern Montgomery County, most of Prince George's County outside the beltway and all of Prince William and Loudoun counties.
I think Greater Philadelphia is ideally suited for a New Urbanist/transit-oriented future, since so much of our Old Suburbanism is transit-oriented as it is thanks to the region's extensive regional rail system, around whose closely spaced stations several highly appealing railroad suburbs have developed.
The trouble is, most of them lack the "work" component of the live/work/play triad, at least not enough work to enable residents to follow a low-car diet for real. We really don't have a Bethesda, for instance, though you could probably fashion one out of several suburban Main Streets hereabouts. (Silver Spring is merely Ardmore or Media or Jenkintown or Lansdale or Doylestown on steroids.)
Our region's principal edge city, King of Prussia, is running every play it can crib from the Tysons playbook, however. In terms of function, the King of Prussia (Business Improvement) District is doing all the right things; in terms of form, they could stand to make another visit or two to Tysons, which is the only East Coast edge city bigger than it, to see what those functions are supposed to look like.
Location: That star on your map in the middle of the East Coast, DMV
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I would site the DC area as the #1 U.S. example also.
It's not just your typical Bethesda, Tysons, Reston, and Silver Spring either. Prince George's county has a flurry of those new urbanist developments along Metro stops planned or under construction. Branch Ave, Largo, Naylor Rd, PG Plaza Metro, and New Carrollton with the new Purple line connecting to Metro.
Virginia has Eisenhower Ave/ Hoffman area development, Springfield, Landmark Mall, Potomac Yard etc etc.
There is a laundry list full of new TOD developments coming to the DC area.
I’ll throw LA into the mix. It had and has a lot of suburban development, but its desirability and subsequent traffic congestion with little alternative made it so parts of the city and metropolitan area have been densely infilled or remade. Its previously emptied out husk of a downtown is a good example of that, but there are also many other nodes now served by transit that have gome through fairly dramatic transformation.
Location: That star on your map in the middle of the East Coast, DMV
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lammius
Why is that ironic?
Ironically meaning my claim of DC suburbs being IMO the best example. Although I know others fit the criteria.
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