Building Better Communities with Transit is a monthly podcast series about transit-oriented development and how it improves communities across America.
This podcast taps into a growing wealth of expertise with building around transit stations or along transit corridors. Interviews share community successes with TOD, highlighting development near transit of all shapes and sizes—heavy rail, bus and everything in between.
Once a month, podcast host Jeff Wood invites experts to discuss ways communities can catalyze economic growth by encouraging development around transit stations. Jeff and his guests will discuss developing local policies that encourage TOD, engaging the public, securing sources for funding, successful community experiences, and other topics.
The podcast is intended to provide more support to communities and local leaders who are working to catalyze new development around transit, give more people access to public transportation, increase access to opportunity, and build robust local economies.
This month on Building Better Communities with Transit we’re chatting with Susan Henderson of PlaceMakers about the use and benefits of form-based codes. We talk about the focus of these codes (the public realm where people gather and interact with each other), how they are used to support transit, and how a code can affect the streets around them.
This month on Building Better Communities with Transit, our host Jeff Wood talks with Stan Wall of HR&A Advisors about value capture is and the NoMa–Gallaudet U station in Washington, DC. According to Stan, that station is “the most textbook, beautiful example of the possibilities in creating value and leveraging that to extreme positive benefit for a city.”
This month on Building Better Communities with Transit we’re joined by the Executive Director of the KC Streetcar Authority, Tom Gerend. In 2016, Kansas City, MO opened the first streetcar the city has seen in almost 60 years and transformed the city’s downtown. Former skeptics of the line are now some of the KC Streetcar’s biggest proponents as businesses have boomed and more people are moving to—and spending money in—the center city. The 2.2 mile KC Streetcar, akin to a downtown circulator, is “a demonstration of the possible.”
This month, we’re joined by Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone on Building Better Communities with Transit to learn about how the Green Line Extension is transforming the city by reconnecting it with high-capacity rail transit.
In this month’s episode of Building Better Communities with Transit, we connect with a planner who helped bring high-quality bus rapid transit to Albuquerque. ART, as the new line is called, is just one project but it forms a frequent and reliable backbone for Albuquerque’s entire transportation system.
Today, we’re releasing the second episode of Building Better Communities with Transit: “Decarbonize the city, a few blocks at time.” This month we explore a new smart city concept taking shape in Denver, CO: Peña Station Next.
We’re proud to announce the launch of Building Better Communities with Transit, a monthly podcast series about transit-oriented development and how it improves communities across America.