Welcome back to the Deep Dive. I want to start
today by putting you in a very specific headspace.
Okay, I'm ready. It's a Monday morning, roughly
8 .15 a .m. You're sitting in your car. You have
a travel mug in the cup holder that is, you know,
slowly going tepid. I know this feeling. And
in front of you is a sea of red brake lights
that stretches as far as the eye can see. You
move forward maybe three feet, tap the brakes,
and stop again. You aren't really living in your
city at this moment. You are surviving the friction
of trying to move through it. That is a visceral
image. And unfortunately, it is the defining
operational reality for millions of people. It's
the commute from hell. Right. But what's fascinating
is that this isn't an accident. It's the result
of specific design choices made over the last
70 years. We designed our habitat around the
automobile, and now we are quite literally stuck
in it. That is the perfect setup because today
we are flipping that script. We're looking at
a vision of the city that treats the car as a
guest, not the owner. I like that framing. A
guest. A city designed not around the car, but
around the train, the tram, and the pedestrian.
We are talking about transit oriented development
or TOD. TOD is one of those acronyms that urban
planners throw around, you know, at cocktail
parties. But it's actually one of the most powerful
concepts we have for fixing the modern city.
So the mission for this deep dive is to figure
out if this is just a utopian dream or if it
actually works. We want to understand this symbiotic
relationship between public transit and where
we live. Because on paper. It sounds great, right?
Live near the train, walk to work, buy groceries
on the way home. But I want to know the mechanics.
How do you actually build it? Does it make money?
And, I mean, does it actually make life better?
Those are exactly the right questions. Because
there is a massive difference between building
a train station and building a community. TOD
is not just, you know, plonking an apartment
complex next to a subway stop and calling it
a day. It's about density. It's about the psychology
of walking. And it's about solving what they
call the last mile problem. We have a huge stack
of sources today. We're talking urban planning
documents, case studies from, I mean, all over
the world, Brazil, Hong Kong, Canada, and a lot
of data on sustainable transport. And I have
to say, some of the stuff in here really surprised
me. Oh, yeah. What stood out? Well, usually when
we talk about public transit, we talk about it
like it's a charity case. Right. It's a public
service that's supposed to lose money. Exactly.
Oh, the subway is losing money again. We need
a bailout. Yeah. But there is a system in our
stack today, Hong Kong, that generates billions
of dollars in profit. It creates a surplus, a
massive one. A massive surplus. And it does it
by acting as a property developer. That just,
it blew my mind. It's a completely different
model for thinking about infrastructure. So we
are definitely going to dig into how that financial
magic trick works. Yeah. We're also going to
talk about the half mile rule, what people are
calling the fried egg analogy. Very tasty analogy.
And why some neighborhoods are literally hotter,
I mean, temperature wise than others. It's a
complex topic, but I promise when it clicks,
you'll never look at a city street the same way
again. All right. let's dive in let's start with
the absolute basics the definition when we say
transit oriented development what are we actually
talking about because i feel like i see real
estate agents slap that label on anything with
a bus stop nearby You're right. It gets used
as a buzzword all the time. But in the actual
discipline of urban planning, TOD has a pretty
strict definition. Okay. It is a type of urban
development that maximizes the amount of residential,
business, and leisure space within walking distance
of public transport. The key word there is maximize.
So it's about cramming as much utility as possible
into that walking radius. It's not just about
being near the train. It's about having things
to do near the train. It's about density and
diversity. You want a compact, dense urban form
that feeds the transit system. Think of it as
a two -way street. The buildings provide the
riders for the train so the train isn't running
empty. And the train provides the customers and
residents for the buildings. It's a self -reinforcing
loop. That's the symbiotic relationship you mentioned
earlier. Okay, but walking distance is subjective.
My version of walking distance, you know, on
a nice day might be very different from my grandmother's
version on a hot day. Is there a hard number
on this? There is. And it's surprisingly consistent
across cultures and studies. It's called the
half mile rule. The half mile rule. OK, break
down the math for us. So planners look at what
they call a catchment area. This is the circle
around the station where people are willing to
walk to and from. And typically this radius is
between one quarter and one half mile. So that's
about 400 to 800 meters for our listeners outside
the U .S. Correct. And that's really the sweet
spot. Why that specific distance? It seems very
precise. Well, it comes down to human patience
and physiology. A half mile corresponds to what
the average person can walk in roughly 10 minutes
at a standard pace, say 3 miles per hour. 10
minutes. So 10 minutes is the psychological cliff?
Is that the idea? Pretty much. Studies show that
up to 10 minutes, most able -bodied people are
happy to walk. It doesn't feel like a chore.
Once you hit minute 11 or 12, your brain starts
doing a calculation. This is a hike. I should
just drive. Exactly. You start thinking about
the time, the weather, what you're carrying.
So if you build your density outside that 10
-minute circle, you lose the transit benefit.
People just won't make the walk consistently.
That's a tight window. A half mile radius isn't
huge when you think about the scale of a city.
It's about 500 acres. That is your canvas. And
how you fill that canvas is everything. Which
brings us to your favorite analogy. The fried
egg. I saw this in the notes and I have to say
I love a good food analogy. So walk me through
the egg. All right. Picture a fried egg, sunny
side up. The yoke is the center. That is your
transit node. The train station, the light rail
hub, maybe a major bus rapid transit stop. Got
it. The bright yellow center. That yoke is where
you put your highest density. We're talking 6,
10, maybe 20 stories high. You want ground floor
retail, offices, and apartments stacked right
on top of each other. Maximum activity. So the
yoke is where the energy is. Yeah. Coffee shops,
the dry cleaner, the entrance to the subway,
little grocery store. Correct. It's vibrant from
morning till night. Then you have the white of
the egg, that's the outer ring spreading away
from the center. As you move out into the white,
the density tapers off. It's not a hard edge.
No, it's a gradient. You step down from those
high rises to mid rises, maybe four to six stories,
then maybe to townhouses or row houses until
you reach the edge of that half mile circle where
it might blend into a more traditional single
family neighborhood. So it's a gradient. It's
not just a skyscraper drop next to a farmhouse.
Ideally, no. It tapers so that it feels like
a natural transition. And inside that egg, the
design of the streets themselves is absolutely
critical. For instance, you need small block
sizes. Why do block sizes matter so much? A block
is a block, right? Not at all. Think about walking
in a city. If the block is huge, a super block,
like you see in some modernist developments,
you might walk for five minutes alongside a single
blank wall of a convention center or a parking
garage. It feels endless. It's boring and a little
creepy at night. It's psychologically draining.
But if you have small blocks with frequent intersections,
you have visual variety. Storefronts change.
You see different buildings. You have choices
of which way to turn. It psychologically shortens
the walk because your brain is engaged. That
makes so much sense. Yeah. It's about keeping
your brain interested so you don't notice the
time passing. Now, I want to clarify something
because I think this is where a lot of American
cities especially get it wrong. Go on. I've seen
brand new apartment complexes that are technically
right next to a train station. You can see the
station from your window. But to get there, you
have to like. Walk across a massive parking lot,
maybe climb a fence. Or cross a six -lane arterial
road with no crosswalk. Exactly. Is that TOD?
Absolutely not. That is what we call transit
proximate development. Transit proximate. That
sounds like a polite way of saying close but
useless. It's a failure of design. It's a developer
checking a box. Being physically near a station
doesn't matter if the experience of getting there
is hostile to a human being on foot. So a transit
proximate is just location. TOD is about connection.
That's the perfect way to put it. A real TOD
has wide sidewalks, high quality pedestrian crossings,
maybe even raised crosswalks. It has bike lanes.
And crucially, it has reduced parking. Reduced
parking. Now, that's usually a deal breaker for
developers, isn't it? They think, if I don't
build a parking spot for every single tenant,
nobody will rent. That's the old thinking, the
automotive city mindset. The whole point of TOD
is to make car ownership optional, or at least
secondary. If you build a massive parking garage,
you are inducing people to drive. You're sending
a signal. The signal is bring your car. Right.
If you build a great walkway to the train, you
induce them to ride. You can't design for the
car and the train simultaneously and expect the
train to win. The car eats up too much space
and money. It undermines the whole project. So
hearing all this, it feels like we were trying
to engineer something. Yeah. That, well, then
we used to do this naturally. I look at old photos
of cities from, say, the 1900s, and they look
exactly like what you're describing. You've hit
on a really, really important point. TOD is not
a new invention. It's a back to the future moment
for urban planning. We are trying to remember
how to do something we used to be experts at.
Okay, so let's go back to that era. The sources
call it the transit city era. Right. If you look
at the timeline between roughly 1850 and 1940,
the transit city was the dominant form of urban
growth in the industrialized world. This was
the age of the steam train and then, more importantly,
the electric streetcar. This is before the interstate
highway system. before the two -car garage became
the american dream exactly cities grew but they
grew in a very specific shape they couldn't just
sprawl out in every direction like a blob they
expanded along the rail lines it was often called
a pearls on a string model of development the
stations were the pearls and the rail line was
the string Precisely. You literally couldn't
build housing five miles away from the station
because there was no way for anyone to get there.
The car didn't exist or wasn't common. So walkability
wasn't a feature you paid extra for in a luxury
condo. Right. It was just physics. It was a necessity.
If you couldn't walk to the tram, you couldn't
get to your factory job. And that dictated the
architecture and the urban form. Like the old
streetcar suburbs of the 1920s. Perfect example.
You see them in cities like Boston, Philadelphia,
Chicago. They have narrow streets. Houses often
have big front porches to encourage social interaction.
And the garages, if there was a garage at all,
were detached and tucked away in a back alley.
The front of the house was for people, not for
cars. And then we stopped. What happened? What
broke that model? World War II happened and then
the post -war economic boom. We shifted hard
to the automotive city. We decided that the future
was personal freedom and that freedom was expressed
through the private automobile. So we built the
highways. We built the highways. We subsidized
mortgages for single -family homes in the suburbs
through the FHA. And this is the craziest part.
We passed zoning laws that actually made the
transit city illegal to build. Wait, illegal?
How can you make a neighborhood illegal? Yes,
through what's called Euclidean zoning. It mandates
the separation of uses. You can't put a corner
store here. This is a residential -only zone.
You must have a 30 -foot setback from the street.
You must have two parking spaces per housing
unit. All the things that creates brawl. Every
single rule was designed to make density impossible
and driving mandatory. We legislated the sprawl
into existence. So we didn't just drift into
car dependency. We planned our way into it. We
engineered it. We aggressively engineered it
for decades. And many developing nations often
skip the transit phase entirely. They went straight
from compact walking cities to massive traffic
jams in the 1970s and 80s, trying to copy the
American model. But now the pendulum is swinging
back. The notes mention a key figure in this
revival, a guy named Peter Calthorpe in the 90s.
Peter Calthorpe is a huge figure. In 1993, he
published a really influential book called The
Next American Metropolis. He essentially looked
at the mess of sprawl, the environmental damage,
the social isolation, and said, this isn't working.
It isn't sustainable. So what was his proposal?
He looked back to the pre -war models and also
to the Garden City movement in the UK. He helped
formalize the modern definition of TOD, laying
out the design principles we just discussed.
The walkability, the mixed use, the density at
the node. So he wasn't inventing a new technology.
He was just pointing at the old blueprints and
saying, hey guys, maybe we shouldn't have thrown
these away. Precisely. The goal was to find a
way to curb urban sprawl and reduce our insane
car dependency. And that brings us to the present,
where cities all over the world are trying to
retrofit this concept. And this is where it gets
really interesting, because the execution varies
wildly depending on where you are. Okay, let's
do a world tour then. I want to start in Latin
America, because one city comes up in almost
every urban planning textbook I've ever seen.
Curitiba, Brazil. Why is Curitiba the rock star
of TOD? Curitiba is famous because they innovated
out of scarcity. In the 1970s, the city was growing
incredibly fast. They knew they needed a mass
transit system, a subway. A classic solution.
Right, but subways are astronomically expensive.
Digging tunnels costs billions of dollars and
takes decades. Curitiba didn't have the money
and they didn't have the time. So they were broke
and crowded. That's a bad combination. A terrible
combination. So their mayor at the time, Jamie
Lerner, who was an architect, came up with a
revolutionary idea. They invented the surface
subway. They created the world's first true bus
rapid transit system, or BRT. But, and this is
the crucial part that so many other cities miss,
they didn't just paint a bus lane on an existing
road. Right, because I've seen bus lanes in U
.S. cities that are just... A suggestion. Cars
turn into them. Delivery trucks park in them.
It's not rapid at all. Not at all. Curitiba treated
the bus exactly like a train. They built dedicated
lanes, often in the center of the road, that
cars physically cannot enter. And they built
what they called tube stations. These glass tubes
on the sidewalk. Yes. You pay your fare on the
platform before the bus arrives. The platform
is level with the bus floor. Pre -warding payment.
That seems like a small detail, but it's huge,
isn't it? It's everything. It means when the
bus pulls up, multiple doors open, people flow
on and off instantly, just like a subway. There's
no single file line of people fumbling for change
while the driver waits and traffic backs up.
It makes the system fast and efficient. But the
TOD magic wasn't just the bus itself. It was
the zoning around it. That was the secret sauce.
They integrated the zoning laws to match the
transit capacity. Along these main bus corridors,
they allowed the highest density tall commercial
and residential skyscraper. Okay. But if you
move just one block away from the bus line, the
allowed height drops dramatically. Two blocks
away, it drops again. The fried egg again. But
for a whole quarter, not just a single station.
A linear fried egg, exactly. It funneled all
the new growth directly onto the transit spines.
And the source notes that this was participatory
city planning. They ran public education campaigns.
They made the bus a point of civic pride. It
wasn't the loser cruiser for people who couldn't
afford a car. It was the smart, modern way the
city moved. That's a branding victory as much
as an engineering one. And I see other cities
copied this playbook. Guatemala City has the
POT plan. Yes. Mayor Alvaro Arzu implemented
the POT plan, which stands for Land Use Management
Plan. They built their transmetro BRT lines and
did the exact same thing, building tall, mixed
-use structures along those arterial roads and
using that same tapering height model as you
move into the neighborhoods. It's the standard
playbook for Latin American urbanism now. It
really is. And you see variations elsewhere,
like in Mexico City. They're in this constant
battle. for their life against air pollution.
So they're a bit more aggressive. A bit more
stick than carrot, yes. They took lanes away
from cars to create busways, but they also have
really strict regulations. They ban older, more
polluting cars. They have no drive days based
on your license plate number. I've heard of that.
But here's the smart part. If you have an electric
car, you get free parking and you're exempt.
You can drive every day. So they are using both
infrastructure and regulation to force a behavior
change away from fossil fuels. OK, let's fly
across the Pacific now to Hong Kong. This is
the one I've been waiting for. The rail plus
property model. You said earlier they made a
profit of one and a half billion dollars in 2014.
That just sounds impossible for public transit.
How? This is the gold standard of financial sustainability,
and it's a model that many cities dream of, but
few can replicate. Why not? Well, let's break
it down. In most cities, the transit agency is
just a mover of people. They collect fares, which
rarely, if ever, cover the cost of running the
trains. Right. The fare box recovery ratio is
usually something like 40 or 50 percent, if they're
lucky. Exactly. So they have to go to the government,
cap in hand, asking for subsidies to cover the
gap. In Hong Kong, the MTR Corporation is a totally
different beast. How so? They are given the land
development rights by the government before the
rail line is even built. Okay, walk me through
the transaction, step by step. Let's say the
government wants to build a new subway line to
a sleepy, undeveloped part of the new territories.
The land there is currently cheap. It's farmland,
maybe some small villages. It's hard to get to.
So its market value is low. Very low. The government
grants the land rights for the areas around the
future stations to the MTR at that low pre -rail
market price. So MTR gets the land for cheap.
For pennies on the dollar of what it will be
worth. Then MTR builds the railway. Suddenly
that sleepy farmland is a 20 -minute air -conditioned
ride from one of the world's biggest financial
centers. And the value of that land skyrockets.
Through the roof. MTR then partners with private
real estate developers to build massive residential
towers and multi -story shopping malls directly
on top of and next to the stations. And MTR gets
a cut of the profits from selling those apartments
and a share of the recurring rental income from
the mall. That is brilliant. Yeah. Usually the
city pays billions to build the subway and a
bunch of random private landlords who happen
to own property nearby get rich because their
property value doubled and they did nothing to
earn it. You've nailed it. That's the problem.
Hong Kong says, no, the public built the train.
So the public via the MTR should capture that
value to pay for the train. It's called value
capture. And because the MTR owns the malls and
often manages the apartment complexes, they get
this steady, massive stream of recurring revenue
from rent and management fees, not just from
ticket sales. That $1 .5 billion profit isn't
from turnstiles. It's from being one of the biggest
landlords in the city. And the stats are crazy.
Something like 90 % of all trips in Hong Kong
are made by public transport. Which, in turn,
makes the retail space in their station malls
the most valuable in the world. You have a guaranteed
footfall of millions of people walking past your
shop every single day. It's a perfect virtuous
cycle. The transit feeds the property and the
property feeds the transit. So why don't we do
that everywhere? Why doesn't the New York MTA
just start building condos over Grand Central?
Politics, history and property rights. In the
U .S., the government usually doesn't own the
land around the stations. Private individuals
do. The idea of the government using eminent
domain to take that land, not for the track itself,
but for real estate development, is politically
difficult. A non -starter. And legally complex.
But in Hong Kong, because of its colonial history,
the government technically owns all the land
and leases it out. So it has much more power
to dictate these kinds of integrated deals. That's
a fascinating distinction. Brings us nicely to
North America. We have a bit of a neighborly
rivalry here in the sources, Canada versus the
USA. And it is a stark contrast. The source material
notes that basically all major Canadian cities
have TOD policies on the books. It is a standard
accepted tool in their urban planning toolkit.
Vancouver is the one I always hear about. The
Skytrain. Vancouver is a textbook example of
retrofitting. They built their Skytrain automated
metro system starting for the Expo 86 World's
Fair. And they very deliberately zoned for regional
town centers at the major stations. Just like
Metrotown. Exactly. Metrotown used to be, you
know, a pretty standard suburban mall. Now it's
a dense, high rise urban core, one of several
in the region. And they have provincial legislation
that effectively requires municipalities to plan
for high density. within 800 meters of rapid
transit. They don't just suggest it, they mandate
it. Right. And you see similar success stories
in Toronto. The entire Yonge Street subway line
has been a corridor of high -rise development
for decades. More recently, there's been a boom
along Shepherd Avenue after a new line was built
there. It's just culturally accepted in Canadian
cities that stations equal towers. And the U
.S. We invented the suburb. Are we getting any
better at this? Or are we still stuck? We are
getting better, but it's patchy. It's not a national
or even statewide priority in most places. It
happens in specific pockets where local leadership
really pushes for it for a long time. The standout
success story is Arlington County, Virginia.
Right across the river from Washington, D .C.
Correct. Specifically, the Rosslyn -Balston Corridor,
which is served by the Metro's Orange and Silver
Lines. I've been there. It's really impressive.
You come out of the metro and it feels like a
real downtown, but you walk two blocks away and
it's quiet, leafy suburbia. That's their bullseye
approach. For more than 30 years, they have consciously
and consistently concentrated almost all their
new commercial and residential development within
that quarter to half mile walking distance of
the metro stations. So inside the circle, high
density. Outside the circle, they protect the
existing single family homes. That was the political
deal they made. And it worked so well, they received
the EPA's very first National Award for Smart
Growth Achievement all the way back in 2002.
They've been at this for a long time. It's essentially
the fried egg executed perfectly over a five
mile stretch. It is. New Jersey is another interesting
case from the sources. They have the Transit
Village Initiative, which started back in 1999.
How does that work? It's a state level program.
The state government gives special designation
and grants to towns that proactively rezone the
area around their train stations for mixed use
development, pedestrian improvements and affordable
housing. So it's an incentive from the state
to encourage good local planning. Exactly. It's
a carrot. And they've designated about 35 of
these transit villages so far all across the
state. And then there's the San Francisco Bay
Area, which is trying to catch up out of sheer
desperation. They have to. The housing crisis
and the traffic are just crippling. They are
forecasting something like two million new people
by 2035. They realize that if all those people
drive cars, the entire region will basically
seize up and cease to function. So their regional
plan called Plan Bay Area tries to funnel at
least 50 percent of all that new growth into
what they call priority development areas. Which
are just TODs by another name. Exactly. Areas
within a half mile of high quality transit. massive
ongoing effort to retrofit the sprawl they created.
So the pressure is on, but I want to pivot now
to the impact. We've talked about the what and
the where, but let's talk about the so what.
Section four in the outline, did this actually
make the world a better place or is it just a
more efficient way to pack people in? Let's start
with the environment. The environmental case
is very strong, but there is a catch that might
surprise you. First, the good news, which is
emissions. A study in Los Angeles that cited
showed that TOD reduces greenhouse gases and
smog -forming emissions by about 30 % compared
to conventional low -density suburban areas.
That's a significant cut. Is that just because
people are driving less? Driving less is the
biggest part of it, for sure. Fewer car trips,
shorter car trips. But it's also the buildings
themselves. How so? An apartment or a condo in
a dense building is much more energy efficient
to heat and cool than a detached single family
house. You have shared walls, so you lose less
heat. The building has a smaller overall footprint
per person. It is just inherently greener from
an energy consumption perspective. OK, that makes
sense. But you mentioned a catch. And I remember
you teasing something in the intro about. Hotter
neighborhoods. Yes. This is the urban heat island
effect. And it's a really important counterintuitive
finding. A study in Brisbane, Australia found
that TODs can actually be significantly hotter
than the surrounding suburbs. Wait, hold on.
We just said TOD is the green solution. Now you're
telling me these ecovillages are baking in the
sun. How does that work? It's physics. When you
increase density, what are you building with?
Concrete, asphalt, steel, glass. Dark, hard,
non -porous surfaces. These materials are fantastic
at absorbing and retaining heat from the sun.
And when you build dents, you often pave over
the natural green space, the lawns, the trees,
the soil, that would otherwise cool the area
through shade and evapotranspiration. So if you
aren't careful, you replace a cool green landscape
with a hot concrete jungle. Exactly. And that
concrete and asphalt holds the heat long after
the sun goes dim, keeping nighttime temperatures
artificially high. The lesson here is that you
can't just maximize density. You have to maximize
livability. Good TOD planning must consciously
and deliberately include green spaces. Things
like green roofs, street trees, pocket parks.
Yes, permeable pavers, light -colored surfaces.
You have to mitigate the heat island effect by
design. You can't just rely on the train to save
the planet. You need the trees and the parks,
too. What about... the economics for the businesses
and for the people actually living there. Generally,
it's a big financial win. The source notes a
study from Phoenix that looked at businesses
near their new light rail line. They saw significantly
more new starts, new businesses opening, especially
in knowledge industries, services and retail,
compared to similar areas far from the rail.
It creates a hub of economic activity. And I'm
guessing property values go up. Oh, absolutely.
A San Diego study confirmed that pretty clearly.
Condo values reliably rise as you get closer
to transit stations and as the walkability of
the neighborhood improves. But the biggest impact
is on the household budget. A study in L .A.
found that on average, residents and TODs save
about $3 ,100 per year on energy and travel costs
combined. That is a huge chunk of change for
a family. That's a vacation or an investment
account or a big cushion for emergencies just
from not having to pay for gas insurance. and
repairs on a second car or maybe even a first.
It's a massive location efficiency dividend.
But, and here we get to the biggest point of
friction in the entire TOD debate, that rise
in property value is a very sharp double -edged
sword. I think I know where you're going with
this, gentrification. This is the critical conflict.
This is the central challenge. We build these
wonderful, convenient, walkable neighborhoods
to be efficient and accessible. But because they
are so desirable because people want to walk
to a coffee shop and take the train to work the
demand spikes and when demand spikes rents and
home prices go up. And the very people who arguably
need the transit the most, the low -income workers,
the service staff who can't afford a car, they
get priced out. Precisely. They get pushed to
the outer suburbs where rent is cheaper, but
now they are forced to buy a car they can't really
afford or take a two -hour multi -transfer bus
ride to get to their job in the city center.
It completely defeats the social equity purpose.
So is TOD just a luxury product for young professionals
and empty nesters? It can be if it's left unchecked,
if you just let the market run wild. The notes
mentioned that some of the early TOD ordinances
in Chicago were heavily criticized for this.
They were either built in already wealthy white
areas or they sparked immediate displacement
in lower income neighborhoods. So how do you
fix that? Because the answer can't be to just
stop building things, right? That just makes
the overall housing shortage even worse for everyone.
No, that's the worst possible response. The solution
is policy. Chicago is actually trying to pivot
now with what they call their 2020 ETOD plan
equitable transit oriented development. So the
E is for equity. Yes. The solution is to mandate
affordable housing as part of the mix, to use
inclusionary zoning, to fund land trusts, to
protect existing tenants from eviction. It's
not just an engineering problem. It's a social
policy problem. So you have to build for everyone
from the start. 100%. The rebuttal to the gentrification
fear is that we need abundant housing at all
price points. If we severely restrict supply,
prices go up everywhere. If we build massive
density with... With equity baked into the plan
from day one, we have a fighting chance to stabilize
costs and create inclusive communities. But the
market will not do that on its own. It needs
strong public sector guardrails. Let's look toward
the future then. Section 5, where is TOD going
next? Is this trend accelerating? It seems to
be. It's expanding globally into new markets.
We are seeing massive projects in Southeast Asia.
The sources mention Indonesia, Jakarta is building
a whole network of TODs with specific themes,
like the Duku Atas transport hub that integrates
multiple rail and bus lines. And Thailand, too.
Yes, Thailand has major proposals for TODs around
their new high -speed rail stations, trying to
create new city centers in places like Ayutthaya
and Pattaya. Malaysia and even Iran in Isfahan
are using using their new subway systems as anchors
for this kind of planned development. So Asia
is doubling down on this model. It's becoming
the global standard for rapid urbanization. It
really is. But there is one place that, funnily
enough, doesn't really talk about TOD very much.
And that's Europe. Why is that? You'd think they'd
be leaders in this. This is the funny part, and
it gets back to what we said about history. The
source points this out, and I was talking to
a planner from Copenhagen recently. When you
say TOD to a European planner, they kind of look
at you with a bit of confusion because in many
European cities, that's just a city. It's not
a special project. It's just how they've lived
for the last 300 years. Exactly. Take Paris.
The metro stations are almost never more than
500 meters apart from each other. The density
of apartment buildings is remarkably consistent
across the entire core city. The walkability
is just baked in. The whole city is a transit
-oriented development. They don't need a special
acronym for what they consider normal. That's
a great reality check. We're over here in North
America giving out awards for smart growth, and
Paris is just like, build in a city. for tuesday
essentially yeah we are spending billions trying
to re -engineer what we systematically destroyed
while they just for the most part never broke
it in the first place wow we've covered so much
ground today from the physics of the 10 -minute
walk to the billions of dollars in hong kong
real estate Let's try to tie this all together.
What's the big story here? If we look at the
whole arc, it's really a story of technology
and choice. We started with the steam trains
and streetcars of 1850 that naturally created
these dense, walkable communities out of necessity.
Then we invented a new technology, the private
automobile. And we made a conscious choice to
rebuild our entire society around it, leading
to sprawl. And now we are realizing the immense
costs of that choice in time stuck in traffic,
in money spent on cars. in carbon emissions,
and we're using planning and policy to put the
pieces back together. Density plus transit plus
walkability equals sustainable living. That is
the formula. It's not magic, it's just good geometry.
So for you listening, here is the takeaway. The
next time you are moving through your city, whether
you're walking, driving, or on a bus, look at
the bones of the neighborhood. Ask yourself,
are you in a yoke? Are you in the white? Or are
you somewhere else entirely? Are you in a place
designed for you, the human, or for your car?
And consider the trade -off. We are so often
sold this idea that a car represents freedom.
But think about the freedom of the transit village,
the freedom from traffic jams, the freedom from
gas prices and car insurance payments, the freedom
to read a book or listen to this on your commute
instead of white -knuckling it behind the wheel.
And I want to leave you with one final, slightly
provocative thought to chew on. Our sources mention
that opponents of TOD often argue that people,
especially Americans, simply prefer the sprawl.
They say we want the big lawn and the three -car
garage, and that density is somehow unnatural
or un -American. You hear that argument a lot,
that the market is just giving people what they
want. But the counterargument is that preferences
are shaped by the options you're given. So is
that preference nature? Are we genetically wired
to want a lawnmower? Or is it nurture? Is the
result of 70 years of government subsidies, zoning
laws, and massive infrastructure spending that
made the car and the suburban house the only
viable, affordable option for millions of families?
If every neighborhood had a vibrant, walkable
yoke, if the rail plus property model made transit
fast, free, and frequent, would who even miss
the drive? That's the billion dollar question,
isn't it? It's a question worth asking next time
you're stuck in traffic. Thanks for listening
to this deep dive. See you next time.