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What’s a TOD? And Why Does it Make Sense for Kona?

Oct 16, 2009

Kona’s award-winning Community Development Plan (CDP) paves the way for new approaches to planning. The approach we’ll be talking about during the Honokohau Village charrette is Transit Oriented Development (TOD).

Need a quick briefing on what TOD is all about? Here’s a Q&A to orient you. For more Frequently Asked Questions about the charrette, see our FAQ page.

Question: Honokohau Village will be a Transit Oriented Development. What does that mean?

Answer: A Transit Oriented Development (TOD) is designed to increase choices for getting around – not only by car, but also by walking, bicycling, and transit.

Q: What’s the advantage in that?

A: When you expand transportation alternatives beyond just private automobile travel, you can invest more in providing the kinds of neighborhoods many people want. If people can get where they want to go by walking and riding bikes, for instance, that makes more customers available for shopping, dining, and entertainment and for commercial space in office buildings. If residents can live close to where they work and give up one or more family cars, that makes a community more affordable, as well. All of that boosts return on investment for developers. But it also means more effective use of taxpayers’ money.

Q: How so?

A: Because it creates opportunities for more compact development, that can mean more efficient use of infrastructure funding, fewer highway-scale thoroughfares, and less real estate reserved exclusively for parking.

Q: But Americans – including Hawaiians – love their cars. How are you going to get them to give up the independence of automobiles and suburbs in order to live more densely in these TOD neighborhoods?

A: No one has to give up anything. Let’s make it easy for the market to decide where and how people want to live. Studies show that there’s a much higher demand for housing in walkable, mixed-use communities then there is supply.

Q: How did that happen?

A: Relatively cheap gas and government infrastructure support for suburban development has made the suburban lifestyle the dominant one for decades. Now, there are plenty of alternatives for folks who want to live in the suburbs and commute everywhere by car. In fact, suburban developments were generally the hardest hit by foreclosures in the recent economic downturn; so for the immediate future, there will be even more suburban homes on the market for those who prefer that way of living.

Q: What will change that trend?

A: Consider first the still unmet demand for safe, mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods – especially from two large demographic groups, Boomer empty nesters looking for low-maintenance comfort and young college grads just entering the job market committed to an engaging, vibrant lifestyle. Think about the declining resources of governments, which will force hard choices on where to invest in infrastructure. Then, factor in the likely increase in oil prices as the world economy ramps back up. Being wedded to automobiles as the only viable transportation option and to auto-centric sprawl as the sole model development pattern seems less wise all the time. By enabling TODs, we’re just expanding choices and letting the market decide.

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  • Big Ideas Become Reality as Kona
    “Charrette” Applies Community Development Goals

    “This is a whole new way of planning,” says Margaret K. Masunaga, deputy director, County of Hawai`i Planning Department. “That’s what makes this so exciting.”

    The immediate focus of this new planning experience in Kona is the Honokohau Village, a 80-acre site that includes the new West Hawai`i Civic Center. But the broader aim is educational.

    As County Planning Director Bobby Jean Leithead Todd explains in this video, this is the first major project to be planned under the award-winning Kona Community Development Plan (CDP), enacted into law in September of 2008. During the multi-day public “charrette," residents and community leaders, developers and builders, and County officials and staff will get to see how new guidelines apply to a real project in a real place.

    “We’ll use this experience to learn from and to teach one another,” says Masunaga, who was hired by Mayor Billy Kenoi and Planning Director Bobby Jean Leithead Todd to oversee Planning Department activities in West Hawai`i. Masunaga is a resident of Captain Cook in South Kona and lives on a Kona coffee farm.

    “By the time we’re finished, we’ll all know exactly what it means when we say ‘TOD’ and what the term implies for development in Kona,” says Masunaga.

    TOD stands for Transit-Oriented Development, a neighborhood development approach encouraged under the new Kona CDP. The transit orientation comes into play when development can be designed to make the most of not only personal automobile travel, but also biking, walking, and transit. A TOD, in fact, maximizes the advantages of mobility choices so that people representing a wide range of ages, abilities, and incomes can share the advantages of living, working, and playing in a compact, walkable community.

    The Kona CDP provides much more than guidance for TODs, of course. It prescribes goals for putting Kona-appropriate development in the right places, in the right scale for those places, and in the right relationships to surroundings. The upcoming Kona charrette will customize Village Design Guidelines described in general in the Kona CDP specifically for the 40-acre, transit-oriented site around the West Hawai`i Civic Center.

    “So we’re not just talking about planning for transit, walking, biking, and cars,” says Masunaga. “We’ll also use the charrette to set standards for Honokohau Village that will include building setbacks and heights, the width of streets and sidewalks, the mix of building types, allowable density ranges, and the placement of public parks and other open space. The result will be a village design that encourages a true neighborhood atmosphere.”

    Conventional planning approaches often complicate community-building goals. “In the not so distant past,” says Masunaga, “we planned subdivisions that were disconnected from one another and where people without access to automobiles were isolated. The disconnections affected all sorts of other things, including infrastructure investment, environmental protection, and public services like police and fire fighting. “

    “One of my dreams,” Masunaga says, “is that my seven-year-old daughter will be able to safely walk just about anywhere she needs to go for her daily needs. That’s not possible in most places in Kona now.

    “Mahalo nui loa to everyone who made the Kona CDP a reality. Now we can implement the policies to guide the Planning Department and the Planning Director on how we want Kona to look like in the next twenty years and into the next generation.”