New streetcar lines in cities like Kansas City, Tucson and Cincinnati are already generating residential development, long before the first passengers hop on board. As Atlanta lays the track for its new system, ATL Urbanist asks: Where's ours?
"As of now, no new non-student residential construction has been started or even announced on the route of the Atlanta Streetcar. The city is losing out on one of the main capabilities of the streetcar that other US cities have enjoyed in theirs: bringing in new residents with new housing," bemoans Darin at the blog ATL Urbanist. This despite years of expert insights into the need for more downtown housing.
"With all of this encouragement by experts to increase residential housing downtown, and with a survey showing the willingness of a huge number of people in the metro area to consider living here, it seems only natural that local politicians would have done everything possible to create a master plan that allows and encourages a windfall of new residential housing to be built," he adds. "City of Atlanta: Do. Not. Screw. This. Up."
FULL STORY: Atlanta: where is our streetcar-spurred housing?
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City of Albany
UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
City of Piedmont, CA
Great Falls Development Authority, Inc.
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research