Above photo: Left: Construction of the future King and Bathurst station, a transit-oriented development project that will be part of Toronto’s Ontario Line. Right: A rendering of the futute King-Bathurst station. Images courtesy SvN.
By limiting our understanding of transit-oriented development, we also restrict our cities’ ability to foster complete communities.
In my early twenties, I lived in Chofu, a city of over 240,000 people on the west side of Tokyo Metropolis. My apartment building was less than a 10-minute walk from Chofu Station, which is at the center of a bustling, fully “amenitized” mini-city, with easy pedestrian access to an urban-scale grocery store, ever-busy retail shops and restaurants, multiple schools, and small-but-mighty parks. Walking and taking transit every day was easy, and without question, my mode of choice.
That was more than 20 years ago, but the memories of Tokyo’s transit system and the feelings I had experiencing it stayed with me. And they’ve informed my efforts to build vibrant, livable communities around — and integrated with — public transit stations in Vancouver, Toronto and Mexico.
Transit-oriented development, or TOD, is not a new approach in city building: think Hudson Yards in New York City, Kensington Station in Atlanta, or CIBC Square in Toronto. But there are few examples where the development potential of the actual transit station is factored into the equation, and almost no examples where it is factored in at scale.
By limiting solutions to what we traditionally understand as TOD, we restrict our ability to foster complete communities. Here in North America, leveraging the air rights of future and existing transit stations can unlock opportunities to deliver more housing and community infrastructure, offset development costs and attract key partners. Yet these opportunities are largely missed.
Key Drivers And Requirements
Science tells us that we have the next five to 10 years to shift away from the carbon-loaded, harmful climate trajectory that humans have set in motion. North America’s city builders need to unravel the unsustainable, single-use patterns of suburban development that have dominated our precious landscape for decades.
We are at a critical point in time where we all need to do more with our limited land and economic resources. We need to offer choice in how we move about our communities, and we need to deliver integrated development projects better, faster and at scale.
Traditionally, transit, residential development and public spaces have been thought of in silos. Yet rail systems in Tokyo and other international cities offer important lessons about building truly integrated communities where transit is a core component. Here’s what I consider the critical success factors:
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A single public organization. An agency that has both accountability and capacity to launch and realize integrated developments amid complex, politically charged and siloed environments is key. This organization needs to hold expertise in both infrastructure and commercial development. In the face of technical complexities and market realities, it needs to be able to plan and build in a way that delivers projects rich with community benefits.
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A streamlined approach. Sometimes to construct, you need to deconstruct. That applies to policies, codes and guidelines that were well-intentioned but are now outdated. Across North America, thousands of ready-to-be-built housing units sit stalled. That’s due not only to macro-economic challenges, but also unnecessarily lengthy approval processes. We need architects and engineers working with urban planners to re-evaluate how policies can be drafted to facilitate development on the ground in rapidly growing cities.
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An understanding of the time-to-value factor. If we don’t plan and design to allow for integrated development early enough in the development of our heavy civil infrastructure networks, it will be extremely costly to retrofit after the fact. In Toronto, we are building over 40 kilometers (25 miles) of new subways and the supports for over 60 million square feet of mixed-use over-site and adjacent development. We are finally learning that timing is critical to create value. It can take as little as six months to blueprint the planning and technical requirements needed to develop a mixed-use building and a subway station. Doing so can bring a revenue stream to the public owner of the transit system through air rights.
Transit Is As Good As Your Ability To Get To It
Riders report wanting safety, cleanliness and predictable travel times from their mass transit systems. But on a more anecdotal level, they want an enjoyable experience in and around the stations they visit daily. We need to think about transit stations not as single-use entities, but as opportunities to create bustling places that make commuters feel good as they walk in, out of and through them.
Transit infrastructure is one of the most expensive investments a city, region or government will ever make. Once completed, transit stations are considered off-limits for future development. The work we’re doing in cities like Toronto is applicable to other North American cities with ongoing transit work. Seattle, Austin and the Bay Area are planning and designing collectively more than 80 kilometers (50 miles) of new transit lines — and they’re improving over 240 kilometers (150 miles) of existing lines.
Like so many others, these cities are also grappling with a housing crisis. Just think of the massive opportunities if we act beyond the bounds of our disciplines to advance our transportation goals, accelerate the development of low-carbon buildings and build community resilience.
The magic of city spaces lies in their complexity and varied mix of uses. My old neighborhood of Chofu is special because of the co-location and stacking of all kinds of uses and programs that are impactful for people and their ability to thrive in daily life.
We can shift the ways we think, work and build. All cities hold vast capacity to be more. It’s worth putting in the effort to prioritize integrated development.