Building a Better Burb

Building a Better Burb

By: Chris Harpstrite 

 

Urban sprawl is a problem that almost every city in United States, and a lot of other countries are currently facing. One of the biggest obstacles that public transit agencies are trying to resovle is designing a transit system that works well in lower-density areas outside of the city. These sprawls cause serious problems for bikers, walkers, and transit riders. This problem, like in most cities, is in St. Louis, and it is something many people in the area feel passionate about fixing.

 Metropolitan St. Louis needs to make a transformational change; this change needs to come from everyone who lives in the area. This change is the way we view light rail and the way we traditionally build around it. Katherine Perez, a renowned transit oriented development (TOD) expert and partner at Estolano LeSar Perez Advisors LLP, suggests that St. Louis has the bones and great potential to develop around our light rail system, the Metro Link. She states “There are dogs being walked in downtown St. Louis, there is activity in the urban core on a Monday night which was not there 10 years ago, there are more and more residents in the downtown area – St. Louis is certainly on the edge and now is the time to make the plans.” Recent initiatives that have been successful like Proposition A in 2010, an expansion of the Metro Link system, and HUD Grant award for the region have used to help improve the quality of life for the region.

  The research and project that is proposed for the St. Louis region will involve choosing a mass transit location the St. Louis region and developing a TOD community around that transit station. Because there are little to no guidelines for TOD development establishing goal and guidelines to follow will be an immediate step taken. To best pick a location for this development research will needed to be looked at and conducted on stops that have the best potential for TOD. Since TOD will be a new implementation in St. Louis picking a site that has great potential for success will help communities and developers in the region become open and accepting to the idea of TOD. 

  Case studies will be of vital importance to this research and project. Similar project to the one being undertaken in St. Louis have been done in cities such as: Portland, San Francisco, Denver, Oakland, and Dallas. All of these projects will be looked through thoroughly to find out what worked and what didn’t. Picking a city that most fits with St. Louis, a personal visit to conduct research personally will be in order. Using these previous attempts of success and failure of TOD will help to make St. Louis’s TOD design a success.

  When completed with the entire project, St. Louis will have an opportunity to implement TOD using this research and design, and using the principles that were outlined in the research they will be able to apply these to several other transit stops in the region. This will be a major step to revitalizing and renewing St. Louis and put them on track to become a transit oriented city.