Sustainable City Year Reports 2020-21 (TriMet)
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Item Open Access Next Generation Transit-Oriented Design(University of Oregon, 2020) Ribe, RobertGreater Portland is known for controlling urban sprawl and its aggressive and successful reintroduction of rail- based regional public transit. A potential powerful synergy between these goals is transit-oriented development(TOD) whereby unusually dense and mixed land uses are profitably developed around transit stations with frequent, high-capacity service. This can significantly reduce sprawl pressures by providing substantial, concentrated housing supply that offers a high quality of life due to easy access to a robust regional transit network and nearby ‘walking’ access to diverse shopping, dining, schooling, cultural, employment, social service and recreational opportunities. Transit-oriented developmentsoften require public incentives and nurturing by local officials and planners. In the Portland region, such urban neighborhoods have been implemented in and near downtown Portland, notably the Pearl District, PCC neighborhood and South Waterfront, and further out at Orenco Station in Hillsboro, along the light rail Blue Line in Washington County. None other, of an appreciable magnitude, is to be found. As the region’s light rail system has expanded into newer and emptier suburban areas one might have expected more transit-oriented developments to have appeared near stations, particularly in such an intensively planned landscape. Where and how might more transit- oriented developments be built, out beyond the older and denser partsof the region? A design studio class of landscape architecture students sought to explore this question among a few promising stations identified by TriMet planners (Figure 1). These were along the agency’s light rail Red Line, including its extension westward along the existing Blue Line. The class’ work is part of a larger TriMet’s Next Generation Transit-Oriented Design initiative which seeks not only to promote more station area developments in the region but to fit them into already developed locations. Some other goals of this initiative, that the UO class attended to, included TOD design in new ways that might sustain social life among increasingly isolated individual lives and respond to contemporary challenges in fostering social and economic inclusion, low-income housing, new mobility technologies, emerging forms of employment and sustainability. TriMet sought creative and speculative ideas with only minimal attention to pragmatic, political, legal and financial constraints. More than usual attention (compared to most suburban transit-oriented developments) was sought in pursuing more low income and diverse housing types, perhaps through housing and mixed use buildings that exceed usual 3-5 story podium building heights. Proposed transit area plans were to be tailored to their local contexts, regional relationships and special site-specific opportunities while trying to integrate the full mix of uses and amenities that high-quality station areas can offer, including employment. The class was made generally aware of the protracted and complex social, political, legal and financial process by which urban areas might come to be redeveloped. The kinds of planning steps, public participation processes, conflicts of interest, difficult negotiations, and financial and land use regulatory issues that must be resolved were sketched for the class. The students were aware that their work was to be brief and rapid (over a nine week academic term with travel restrictions) and not a substitute for the full consideration, public engagement and careful resolution of a redevelopment plan. They understood that their plans and designs are only an introductory set of ideas to begin conversations and initiate a robust planning process at each station that was studied.