Introducing. . . TransitCorridify!
Overview:
What it is: TransitCorridify is a generative study tool to analyze the cost, revenue, green space potential, and density score of implementing a transit-oriented development in your city.
How it works: Adjust the input sliders to set the study area (in city blocks), corridor (street, train track) width, average building footpritnt, zoning maximum building height, building spacing, and rate of below market housing units to generate potential grids
Who it’s for: City planners, architects, project managers, community members, students
Why it’s important: Dense, mixed-use, transit-oriented developments (especially near downtonws) have the potential to decrease car dependence, increase housing availability, increase urban greening, and improve overall quality life for residents. TransitCorridify allows user to customize what this could look like in their community and project potential costs/benefits of implementation.
With TransitCorridify, you can. . .
- Calculate construction cost
- Assuming that this is a “brand new” development and that every square foot of building construction costs $200/sf
- Calculate residential & commercial floor area
- Depending on the average building footprint, building spacing, study area, and maximum building height, the node logic uses a formula to approximate height variation amongst buildings, where buildings closest to the corridor have the highest density and gradually decreases as you move away
- Using the total volume, standard story height of 10’ per floor, and base area as speficied the user input, we can approximate the total square footage of the development, where the first floor is slated for commercial use and all upper floors are residential
- Calculate total revenue
- Using the above floor areas, we multiply the average commercial and residential rent prices for the Bay Area ($66/sf and $3.32/sf, respectively) to calculate annual revenue
- We account for affordable housing by multiplying the rate of affordable units (i.e., 30% of all units) by the total residential square footage and reduce the rent by 50%
- This logic can be adjusted in the script to account for your municipality/region!
- Calculate Payback period
- Dividing construciton cost by revenue gives us a rough estimate for how many years it would take for the investment in a transit corridor to pay off
- Calculate maximum greening potential
- Assuming that all of the spaces between buildings within the surrounding city blocks is sued for urban greening, the tool calculates the maximum area in sf that could be dedicated to green space
- These spaces are marked in green in the dynamo graph
- Calculate density score
- The total sf of development (commercial and residential) is divided by the sf of the study area (including spaces) to get a density score, where a higher score = greater density in the corridor
- The density of individual buildings is visually reflected with a color gradient of red to blue, where red buildings are more dense (building floor areas/footprint normalized value by the max and min) and blue buildings are less dense
Future applications:
This tool could be built upon with other calculations, like
- sf of affordable housing
- rooftop solar PV potential/corresponding energy savings
- walkability scores
Teaser Image:
Dynamo Script:
Dynamo Player Interface:
Generative Study Results:
Video Tutorial:
*Note: the zoom didnt switch to see the generative design and dynamo interfaces, but you can see the screenshots here!