NRDC, June 1, 2018: When public transportation leads to gentrification
There once was a time in America when people of means weren’t keen on the idea of living right next to a rail station. Real estate developers, as a general matter, didn’t throw lots of capital into these communities, many of which quite literally defined the proverbial “other side of the tracks.”
Things have changed. Transit-oriented development, once little more than a jargony buzz phrase uttered by urban planners and public transportation advocates, is transforming cities and suburbs all across the country as the market for housing near transit hubs continues to explode.
Unfortunately, this type of development is also changing the affordability of long-standing communities that working-class residents have called home for generations. At issue is something called transit-induced gentrification, a socioeconomic by-product of transit-oriented development that would have been largely unthinkable 25 years ago, when the idea of living above a busy train station and not owning a car held less appeal among the upwardly mobile than it does today.
These same upwardly mobile workers, disproportionately young and college educated, are increasingly citing access to a variety of transportation options—including subways, light rail, bus rapid transit, and pedestrian and bicycle paths—as a determining factor when they’re choosing where to live. Many of them are abandoning automobile ownership altogether; they’d rather take the money they would spend on a car and insurance payments and spend it instead on a nice apartment within walking, biking, or railing distance to shops, restaurants, bars, gyms, and the office.
