At an event I attended this morning, one of the speakers said a very interesting thing that really got me thinking. This gentleman was from a local transportation board and was discussing High Speed Rail (HSR) as the next big mode of transportation for the Bay Area and the country.
The great point he made had to do with President Eisenhower and the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. This was legislation that created our current mega-system of highways throughout the country. That fact alone is uninteresting, but you have to think about the economy of the last 50 years that was created by that single legislative act.
You could argue, from a development standpoint, that this bill was the progenitor of things like suburban tract developments, strip malls, hotel chains, national restaurant chains, mega parking lots and an overall American focus on the automobile. Because people now had access to freeways, it opened up all of these development and community creation possibilities, giving you access to locations previously cut off from the rest of the world. We can maybe blame that act for part of our current housing problems in making bedroom communities for larger cities possible and for allowing entire towns to be built around nothing but a strip mall, a school and a freeway exit without a true economic/social core to sustain that town long term. 50+ years of development based on the concept of the "open road".
This also got me thinking: what will the next big mode of transportation inspire? Since the beginning of time, development has followed transportation. People built near oceans and rivers because boats were the best way to get around. The West sprang up around train stops in the middle of nowhere. Major cities like San Francisco got to be major cities because they were at the crux of shipping routes.
My favorite example is to look at Los Angeles which was mostly developed after 1956. Do you think the new mantra of "highways for everyone" had a significant impact on that major metropolis? I would even go so far as to say Los Angeles is probably the only major city in America without a decent and reliable public transportation system. The pattern of development in Los Angeles was completely designed with the suburban ideal in mind, only made possible by the myriad of freeways in that city.
Changing Patterns Affect Development
As a developer, you should be thinking very hard about upcoming means of transportation and what that will mean to where you build. Will High Speed Rail open up entirely new parts of the country for development? What happens to your current properties if the way we move stops being private car? What sort of parking do you need to put in when there's no need to drive anymore?
We see this now with a renewed focus on infill, mixed-use and Transit Oriented Developments. The pendulum is shifting away from the white picket fence and the two car garage back to the closeness of city living.
Even further into the future, what if we ever develop transporters like on Star Trek? Imagine the possibilities that exist worldwide to create communities anywhere on the planet where you can still commute to where you work in an instant.
Now obviously I'm getting a bit grandiose here, and I don't necessarily think that personal transportation will ever go away, but it is a sure thing that the way we think about and use transportation in the next 50 years will have changed radically from the day that Eisenhower created our national highway system.
Are you planning for the future?
Jared Willis
Great column!
Posted by: Pat Willis | October 03, 2009 at 08:50 AM