Came across this ridiculous sign today in Pleasant Hill. It reads: “Contra Costa Centre Transit Village”. As you can tell, it plonked next to a major freeway off-ramp that is definitely not transit-oriented.
This is hardly an isolated example. “Transit Village” has become a popular name for redevelopment projects (that are neither transit nor village). While the Transit Village concept might have once been a good idea, it is now a meaningless planner buzzword. Can we just kill the term already?
And yes, they call it a “transit” “village” because of a nearby BART station (and parking fortress). Good luck walking there, though. And note that logo on the front, commanding commuters to Work, Live, Shop . I’m sure the slogan sounds much better in the original German.
Seeing the same things here in Fresno. Transit oriented development that has nothing to do with transit. We also get lovely “pedestrian-focused” development which obviously is pedestrian unfriendly.
Worse, someone decided this lane-infested monstrosity deserved a planning award:
http://www.planning.org/awards/2012/
Though it does sound like they’ve removed the parking fortress or are planning to? http://www.contracostacentre.com/sitemap.php
Don’t be fooled — these renderings are always careful to obscure parking. In fact, the first phase of the project was construction of a 1551-car garage.
Plus, a bike/ped bridge was built over the Treat Blvd, a 6-lane speedway next to the develoment. Want to cross at street level? Be careful…
http://www.ebbc.org/?q=node/7893
While we’re at it, make BART cross out the “Contra Costa Centre” part of the station name. It’s not a destination.
Wow that’s way the f*** out there east of Orinda. You live out there and you’d die laughing if someone told you to walk to a store to buy a quart of milk.
I have a similar concern about New Urbanist developments that are surrounded by parking. Maybe a bus gets routed through it, maybe not.
Here’s a discussion of one, would love to get more feedback:
http://www.strongtowns.net/forum/topics/westchester-ny-proposed-highway-development
It’s depressing. The MacArthur station development, which has the potential to be a fine place (though it’s by a freeway, it’s also in the midst of an old part of town with lots of existing, underused old buildings which work well on a pedestrian scale). But they’ve designed it to have scads of parking– more parking than anything else, by square feet, I believe– and the first thing going up is a $40m parking garage. Of course, they have no plans to actually break even on the thing, or even charge market rate.. They’ll just get a bunch of subsidies to build it (because it’s so environmentally friendly, don’tcha know).
[...] that regional leaders are moving forward with plans for Raleigh to Richmond high-speed rail. Systemic Failure points out that many communities have adopted a rather liberal interpretation of the term [...]