Two years ago, Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) President John Norquist approached the lectern to address the Texas Transportation Commission upon the invitation of the late Commission Chairman Ric Williamson, an avowed road warrier. Knowing that the transportation commission, the overseers of the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), had just embarked on one of the largest road building efforts in recent American history, Norquist said, “Mr. Chairman, I’m not against your big road running between your cities–but I am here to talk about how TxDOT can begin to support local communities, neighborhoods and economic development.”

Williamson and his colleagues were intrigued, but several of them continued to peek at their Blackberrys.

Norquist then started his famous “Highways to Boulevards” powerpoint presentation. When he showed the transformation of a portion of downtown Seoul, South Korea from a scarred aging corridor with an elevated highway into a modern walkable economic development marvel–a reinvented boulevard lined with new buildings and a linear park running down its middle–the commissioners stopped and stared. Norquist had touched a nerve. America has been building roads without any regard to what surrounds them, and it has to look at examples across the Pacific to understand how we have been losing ground here at home.

At that moment, the commissioners realized that this was a real opportunity to do something different.

Having introduced Norquist that day, I started toward the lectern to close the presentation. Chairman Williamson first thanked Norquist and Mike Krusee for arranging Norquist’s visit. A national leader in urban transportation reform, Krusee at that time was serving as chairman of the Transportation Committee of the Texas House of Representatives but could not be at the presentation because the legislature was in session that day. As chairman of the House committee, Krusee provided oversight of TxDOT and had been telling Chairman Williamson for some time that Norquist had an important message to deliver to Texas, eventually securing the invitation for Norquist to speak.

That day Williamson had obviously listened, asking me “what would you and Chairman Krusee like to do now?” I responded that TxDOT should take a serious look at its roadway design policies. With that, the commission created the TxDOT Urban Thoroughfares Committee.

After a year of work, the committee recommended–and TxDOT agreed–to adopt as an accepted roadway design criteria for the state, the Manual for Walkable Urban Thoroughfares. That manual recently had been adopted as a recommended practice by the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE). Developed in partnership with CNU and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), the ITE Manual provides design criteria for streets that not only move cars safely but that also support walkable urbanism. The first state in the Union to adopt the ITE Manual, Texas now provides for true context sensitive solutions in urban conditions on its federal aid and state funded roadways.

Other states have undertaken similar reforms. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) has undertaken a reform initiative under the leadership of its progressive transportation secretary, Allen Biehler. By adopting the Smart Transportation Guidebook, PennDOT has provided the state with the means to connect its investment in transportation infrastructure with sustainable communities through context-sensitive street design.

In Virginia, the state will no longer fund and maintain roadways that provide for only one way in and one way out of subdivisions. Why? The lack of a network of streets leads to unsustainable gridlock, resulting in more transportation funding pressure on the state to simply widen roads. More importantly, the “one-way in and one-way out” design does not support sustainable, interconnected walkable neighborhoods.

The common thread running through the Texas, Pennsylvania and Virginia initiatives is support for sustainable development patterns, rather than just mitigating traffic congestion. For 60 years our system of designing and funding roads has been based on the latter. We must now shift the system’s purpose to the former.

The starting point is state DOT roadway design policy. In this context, it is time to engage the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO) to consider the ITE Manual as an analog to its Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets, known as the “AASHTO Green Book.” The flexibility in design called for in the AASHTO green book clearly embraces the intent of the ITE Manual.

In addition, the federal authorization of Metropolitan Planning Organizations must begin to shift the focus of federal transportation spending from the mitigation of traffic congestion to connecting and sustaining walkable, transit-friendly neighborhoods. As the Obama Administration has recognized through its Livability Partnership of USDOT, HUD and EPA, transportation spending (as well as housing expenditures) must become primarily an investment in neighborhoods. The key will be ensuring that the design and funding of our streets support those places, instead of just making it easy to drive through them.

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America’s 60-year development pattern has broken down, like an exhausted 1950 Chevy rusting at roadside. But the building and real estate industry is only slowly awakening to the new reality.

We all knew the pattern, popularized after World War II and mostly triumphant since. A smart builder discovers and buys an inexpensive piece of cornfield or pasture. Up go single-family houses, or, more recently, many townhomes. Proximity to stores, offices, other conveniences (except perhaps schools) is irrelevant: everyone will be driving anyway. The successful sales prove it.

No longer. Almost overnight, the ground rules for development have been eviscerated. Sure, real estate calculations of cash flow and value are still being made. And yes, local planning and zoning commissions are continuing to hold meetings until midnight to decide whether to approve zoning for the proverbial townhouse project down the street from a single-family enclave.

But, have you recently heard of a developer securing a construction loan for virtually any kind of standard real estate residential development? His or her banker likely told them that “we aren’t originating construction loans at this time.”

Why? The fundamentals of the “bedroom community” economy have collapsed. Banks have not figured out at what point they will hit the bottom of their financing crisis. The need for radically improved, sustainability-focused strategies has never been more compelling than in this time of looming home foreclosures, $4 a gallon gas, an economy in decline, and broad agreement that the earth’s fragility is not longer just the cry of the fringe.

The new development “secret” is simple but critical: not just to reject our old way of building housing units any place, but to focus early and hard on creating and strengthening whole communities.

Not so long ago, local economic development strategies revolved almost exclusively around recruiting businesses. “Quality of life” was just a buzzword used as the calling card of the local neighborhood activists.

But not today! Economic development worth its salt has become firmly connected to place, and to the environment. The quality of life of our neighborhoods, our cities and our regions has now become a bottom-line factor for many business decisions.

Business calculations have always been, will always be driven by competition. Today’s competition is more and more about recruiting skilled people. Cities and regions are increasingly intent on attracting the best and the brightest because they know companies want to operate where they can recruit and hold high quality human talent.

This new focus dovetails with the necessity of rethinking the capacity of developers and public servants to create attractive, sustainable communities. Bankers will be obliged to make their capital decisions the same way. The New Urbanism real estate practices introduced in the 1990s bring together these opportunities.

But the “new” in the New Urbanism is really just expanded appreciation for the more sustainable approaches to planning and development recognized by leaders of earlier generations. Developer J.C. Nichols, a founding member of the Urban Land Institute, embodied those ideals. He developed numerous communities including the 1920s Country Club District in Kansas City, anchored by the famous Country Club Plaza, a model of a walkable, mixed use urban center in a suburban location.

Through the seminal Community Builders Handbook produced under his leadership, Nichols promoted the idea that predictability in land markets and protection of value over time requires neighborhood planning, reliance on design, and integrating such standouts of the civic realm as grand boulevards, parks and public buildings.

I’m engaged myself in putting this approach into practice. Our firm, the Gateway Planning Group, planned a 2,000-acre transit oriented development (TOD) in Leander, Texas. A key goal: to enhance the value and potential of the growth corridor that’s expanding northward from Austin along a new rail transit line. The master plan will be carried out through an urban design-based zoning and subdivision ordinance.

My economist colleague, Jon Hockenyos of TXP, Inc., determined that the tax base of the area would be roughly $900 million at build-out if it were built as a typical suburb. But the new plan and code, Hockenyos calculated, would double the build-out value to almost $2 billion. Now his projection seems modest: as the market has recognized the value of our TOD approach, the value of the raw land has increased almost 600 percent.

And why? It’s because Leander, instead of being just another exploding bedroom community, will have its own cosmopolitan center supported by convenient regional rail connections to Austin. We’re convinced the Leander TOD, by providing a mix of housing options, pocket parks and neighborhood businesses, will attract talented young professionals as well as empty-nesters with disposable income. We fully expect to sustain the region’s economy, reduce its ever-expanding carbon footprint, and achieve sustainability on a site otherwise destined for classic sprawl.

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