Which Urban Areas Do Transit-Oriented Development Best?

A Connect 1 battery electric bus (left) and The Hop streetcar vehicle (right) at The Couture transit concourse. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

Every day at The Overhead Wire we sort through over 1,500 news items about cities and share the best ones with our email list. Each week, we take some of the most popular stories and share them with Urban Milwaukee readers. They are national (or international) links, sometimes entertaining and sometimes absurd, but hopefully useful.

Transit oriented development around the US: A new tool from the Urban Institute allows people to explore how well states have invested in transit oriented development. Pulling together the data, researchers found that a 10% increase in the share of housing units near transit induces 10 more transit riders per person per year. While many cities have increased their housing supply near transit, but to encourage more, more transit frequency and service is needed. (Yonah Freemark | Urban Institute)

A brick to cool bus shelters: Industrial designers at the University of Zurich have designed a terracotta brick that cools the areas around it through evaporation. In controlled environments, the bricks were able to reduce temperatures by 9 degrees C, though results are dependent on humidity, airflow, and maintenance. Urban materials such as asphalt tend to increase surface temperatures and an alternative is needed where people congregate. (Times of India)

A land value tax is possible: Washington State’s property tax system rewards speculation by taxing land and improvements together. This allows people to sit on vacant lots waiting for an increase in value while investments that create new development are taxed. To solve this, a new report from the Center for Land Economics suggests exempting improvements such as buildings from the property tax. A model that shows what would happen if Spokane were to adopt such a measure shows that more housing and investment would be possible. (Dan Bertolet | Sightline Institute)

Five things about transportation reporters: In a recent webinar hosted by the Eno Center for Transportation, five reporters who focus on transportation from around the United States shared five lessons for how the media covers transportation. Transportation is political and broad, reporters need stories people engage with as publishers care more and more about clicks and engagement, every national story is local, reporters and agencies have different objectives, and relationships still matter. (Philip Plotch | Eno Center for Transportation)

Urban development without subsidies: Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb believes that lakefront airport property has a lot of potential for redevelopment but if it happens it will be without tax subsidies from the city. The property is highly accessible to transportation, amenities, and downtown Cleveland. As Good Jobs First argues, tax incentives and breaks are an expensive way to do economic development that ultimately impacts a city’s bottom line over the long term. (Kristan Wong Karinen | Good Jobs First)

Quote of the Week

Commercial properties right now are not regulated under any stormwater permit. Think Costco, think Amazon warehouses. Large places with large parking lots are really what we’re going after.

–Sean Bothwell, executive director of California Coastkeeper Alliance in the Los Angeles Times discussing how advocates are trying to get CA regulators to crack down on parking lot stormwater pollution.

This week on the Talking Headways podcast we’re joined by Jaime Benavides and Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou of Brown University to discuss their new paper showing how community severance by road infrastructure and traffic has led to more mental health related hospital visits in New York City.

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