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Intermodal Facilities
May 2002 • Issue No. 52 • Volume XVII • Number 2
Networking
Transit for Livable Communities: Station Area Planning with PLACE3S
By Sara Stein, Portland, Oregon 1-503-478-2357, steins@pbworld.com and Christine Faith
PLACE3S has proven to be an invaluable component of many recent transportation and land-use planning projects across the U.S. The authors tell how it is being used to help community leaders plan for "smart growth" and points out some of its many benefits.

The focus of the Transit for Livable Communities (TLC) project is to determine what types of development should occur on the land immediately surrounding twenty-one light rail stations in order to create more livable neighborhoods. The Sacramento Regional Transit District is working with the South Sacramento and Rancho Cordova communities to that end, as these stations are along new light rail extensions in those communities. Of the twenty-one stations, fourteen are either under construction or proposed, while the remaining seven are existing.

The TLC project has the industrious task of generating land use plans for these twenty-one light rail stations nearly simultaneously. The three major components identified early in the project that need to be addressed to ensure the most success for TLC are:

  • Community involvement and emotional investment

  • Planned and eventual economic viability for the communities around the stations

  • Land use plans that are grounded in sound planning principles.

Overview of PLACE3S

To achieve its specified goals, The TLC project implemented PLACE3S--an urban planning method and GIS tool designed to help communities understand how growth and development decisions can contribute to improved sustainability. PLACE3S is under development by PB in conjunction with Fregonese Calthorpe Associates, Pacific Meridian Space Imaging Services and ESRI. Its development is sponsored by the California Energy Commission, with assistance from the California Department of Transportation and the U.S. Department of Energy.

PLACE3S is an avenue based script that uses:

  • ArcView to generate data relating to land use scenarios

  • Spatial analyst to generate a generic grid and grids for employee density and dwelling unit density.

It then uses those grids to project densities, total numbers and distribution of indicators such as annual vehicle miles traveled and percent change in rail boardings.

Conforming Land Use Codes for PLACE3S

The parcel data used in the TLC project is a Sacramento County GIS shape file that was enhanced to be used in PLACE3S. One of the significant enhancements that had to occur before PLACE3S could use the county data was the renaming of land use codes. PLACE3S typically uses approximately forty land use types, while original GIS data can have considerably more, as in this case.

The land use codes from the county were matched closely to the PLACE3S land use codes, then converted by adding and populating a new field that PLACE3S reads from. This procedure allowed for PLACE3S to use data from nearly any source, and conform that data to a format that PLACE3S can utilize.

Benefits of Using PLACE3S

As a result of using the PLACE3S planning method for the TLC project, an effective interface between the community members and planners has been created:

  • The community members have gained some sense of "ownership" in the project and an understanding about the important connection between land use and transit ridership.

  • The planning professionals have benefited by having access to land use plans that have gone through some level of community review very early on in the project life. In addition, this access enables them to better guide future planning decisions.

Conclusion

The TLC project is attempting to plan for "smart-growth" and to correct some earlier oversights by now considering carefully what types of land uses are most appropriate around light rail stations in the greater Sacramento area. PLACE3S is helping community leaders to engage and interact with the public, accurately measuring and showing economic factors, review land use plans designed by planners, and facilitate positive growth in the South Sacramento and Rancho Cordova communities.

Sara Stein, an urban planner, has provided technical planning, research, facilitation, community outreach and GIS mapping services for multi-jurisdiction, multi-issue projects throughout the U.S. She uses GIS technology to assist in the decision-making process for projects that require innovative approaches to land use/transportation planning, design and analysis.

Christine Faith is a former PB employee.

[Ed. note: For additional information on PLACE3S, see two earlier PB Network articles by Sara, "Planning with PLACE3S" PB Network Issue No. 49, March 2001, pp. 71-72 and "More Planning with PLACE3S", PB Network Issue No. 50, September 2001.]
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