Transit-Oriented Development – Highlights

By Lisa Nisenson
| 4:03 p.m. December 7, 2012

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As promised, we are sharing the highlights of the Transit-Oriented Development workshop, the last of five held on Dec. 3 and sponsored by the Florida Department of Transportation.

Here are what someone mildly interested in transit but hugely interested in making a great city should know:

Cities are cool again and transit is a big reason. Buses, once the dominion of winos and drivers who learned too late about aggressive DUI enforcement, are now coming into their own.

Effective transit-oriented development relies on getting a couple of things right: compact design, the right density and intensity of uses, the use mix, street and block structure around station areas, building form and placement, pedestrian amenities and parking.

There are three scales to look at: (1) systems, (2) corridors like the North Trail and Bee Ridge, and (3) stations and surrounding sites.

Florida has identified three main TOD “place types:" (1) Regional Center, (2) Community Center, and (3) Neighborhood Center. They are roughly the Large-Medium-Small of places. Most of what Sarasota has would be community and neighborhood centers.

All of the presentations are on www.fltod.com under the tab "agency training." The presentation on Place Type Analysis was really good and easy to understand.

One really interesting tidbit: One attendee was from the advocacy group Reconnecting Lee County. Yeah---the same Lee County where the not-so-transit-friendly Tea Party got started. We don’t have a Reconnecting Sarasota County, but fear not---you have This Week in Sarasota.

TWIS is teaming with the monthly networking gabfest called Green Drinks, the next installment of which is on Thursday, Dec. 18 at 5:30 pm at eat here on Main Street and Links. While targeted to sustainability professionals, in a place like Sarasota that pretty much means everybody. TWIS has plans to make drinking and planning (usually not two activities used in the same sentence) something you want to do. More next week, but mark Dec. 18 at 5:30 p.m. on your calendars.