Transportation & Housing/Economic Development

I came across two things today that, although coming from different sources, had a common theme:  mass (rail) transportation  and development.  First, via The Political Environment, the Wisconsin Technology Council has a post about mass transportation and the economic development that is sure to follow in its path:

In communities such as Brookfield, Oconomowoc and Watertown, which are proposed stops along the Milwaukee-to-Madison route, public and private leaders are hustling to persuade planners to build stations in their towns. Why? They expect a mix of commercial, retail and residential development to follow the trains like a caboose.

Tom Still notes the absurdity of raging against a mild $7.5 million per year subsidy over the proposed high-speed train when "Milwaukee’s Zoo interchange, the mix-master for I-94, I-894 and Highway 45, could cost $2.3 billion to rebuild once work begins in 2012."

And then in my mailbox I found a paper by an attorney, Robert Voelker, that discusses transit-oriented development (TOD).  It notes the economic growth that follows (rail) transit stops, and the risk of gentrification pushing out low-income people who, because they least can afford car ownership, often need access to mass transportation.  He suggests that communities ensure a mixed-income neighborhood by ensuring that there are affordable units created within the new developments.

Though there may be fears that market-rate apartment residents will not want to live near lower income people, Generation Y—a vast majority of the current apartment rental market—is much more open to multiculturalism and urban lifestyles and find mixed-income communities to be more interesting and less homogeneous places to live.