Introducing TransitCorridify!

My tool is a generative design application to help local planners and designers explore transit-oriented developments in their community! This will create various streetscapes of varying building heights and types (low, med, high density) to help visualize designs and project metric outcomes to optimize for the benefits that are best suited for their constituents needs.

Intended users

My tool is intended to support urban planners, architects, engineers, and city council people in understanding what high-density, transit-oriented development could look like in their community.

Need you’re trying to provide a solution or support for

California — among many other states in the US and regions around the world — is suffering from a severe housing crisis. At the same time, increasing populations in cities is driving up the demand for individual VMT (vehicle miles traveled) that can worsen air quality, traffic, and GWP (global warming potential) emissions like carbon. This has brought the solution of the Transit Corridor to light, which is transit-oriented development that supports more housing, retail, and commercial activity around mass public transit to optimize developments with beneficial housing, economic, social, and sustainability outcomes. At the same time, this can be difficult to implement for municipalities with lower capacities to dedicate time to generating solutions. Further, getting time-efficient visuals and projections for impacts for a transit corridor can be an effective way to win trust/excitement for a new development in the face of NIMBYism.

Inputs

Users will input:

the max area of higher-density development
zoning restrictions (i.e., maximum height)
average sf of buildings
setback from the corridor (street, train track)
spacing between buildings

Underlying logic of the model you’ll implement

My model will use inputs to generate various scenarios for what a transit-oriented development could look like in a given context. For the given area, the tool will generate 2 mirrored grids of U and V values on either side of the corridor (base dimensions for the avg street or train track will be hard coded).

Then, I will generate a study that gives different options for building heights, spacing, and gross floor area so that users can get a high level look at what potential transit oriented developments could look like and what it might cost to build them. These will be roughly expressed by rectangular masses of varying heights/widths.

Cities/projects might be more constrained by cost and want to have the biggest bang (most revenue generated) for the smallest buck (lowest cost). This might look like having a few high density buildings or a series of medium density buildings. . . this tool will allow decision makers to explore the potential plans that work best for their citizens’ needs.

Outputs

Potential outputs that I am considering are