Redesigning Suburbia for Walking and Transit: Emerging Concepts

Abstract

Suburban sprawl has caused many problems in the last several decades. Of particular concern is overreliance on the automobile and the lack of alternative forms of transportation such as walking, bicycling, and transit. The advocates of neotraditional town planning have developed the traditional neighborhood development (TND) and pedestrian pocket (PP) concepts for redesigning American suburbia to solve its deficiencies. This paper describes these concepts and then evaluates their potential usefulness to allow walking and transit in suburbia. It is concluded that these concepts offer a unique opportunity to integrate land‐use and suburban development policies with transportation policy to stop sprawl and create compact, mixed‐use communities. However, of the two concepts reviewed, the pedestrian pocket offers a better potential for developing a new suburban growth pattern on a metropolitan scale that is pedestrian‐ and transit‐oriented. Its successful implementation depends on the existence of a supportive metropolitan‐scale land‐use and transportation plan.