| Transit-Friendly Development
is a joint effort between NJ
TRANSIT and the Alan
M. Voorhees Transportation Center (VTC)
to enrich the TOD conversation in New Jersey's diverse
communities by providing information about best practices,
model programs, legislation, and the key issues that
affect TOD's acceptance at the local level. More broadly,
Transit-Friendly Development provides a medium
where county leaders, municipal decision-makers, and
the public can learn how to create livable, sustainable
and thriving communitites — and discover why such
places are vitally important to New Jersey as it moves
ahead into the 21st century.
| This issue of
Transit-Friendly Development highlights
several examples in which consensus building played
a major role in successful TOD initiatives —
projects that created substantial physical, social
and economic changes in a particular area. Various
stakeholder groups — existing residents,
business owners, public officials and developers
— were each impacted in very different ways.
Building consensus becomes a vital tool for addressing
the needs of all these groups and individuals.
Indeed, many of the best examples of TOD involved
a concerted effort to understand the goals and
desires of interested parties.
|
source: www.rpa.org
|
We focus on the work of Rob Lane, a
planner and leader in the field of consensus building,
who has provided his services to numerous projects throughout
the Northeast. In New Jersey, he worked with Netcong,
a designated Transit Village. A shared vision for future
development also contributed to the success of our featured
municipality, Collingswood, through the work of A. Nelessen
Associates (see
also Volume 1, Issue 2). And, we highlight an impressive
project in Connecticut, the Gilbert and Bennett Wire
Mill redevelopment, which placed a high value on community
involvement (Duany, Plater-Zyberk charette process).
We hope these examples will inspire
community officials, citizens and planners to join together
to build their vision before pursuing developer
interest and investment.
On a final note, we received many helpful
comments and suggestions on the first two issues of
the newsletter. Please continue to help improve the
newsletter by letting us know what you would like to
see in future issues. At the bottom of each article
you will find a link to our survey. We have shortened
it from our previous issues, so it should only take
a minute to give us your opinions. Thank you, and we
hope you enjoy the newsletter!
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