Let's Build a Traditional City and Make a Profit

Re:Let's Build a Traditional City and Make a Profit by NickPollard on Thursday July 31, 2014 @06:44AM (#8113353)

You can definitely force developers to contribute to Transit development. In London, for example, the developer for Battersea Power Station was required to contribute £100 million (~ $150m) to the extension of the Northern Line (part of the London Underground 'Tube' network).[1]

In a dense city like London, which doesn't have the wide roads and car-focus of US Cities, transit is important and the value of residential property here is very highly correlated with distance to transit hubs. For a developer, it can make a lot of economic sense to develop transit to new developments.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battersea_Power_Station#2012_re...

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Re:Let's Build a Traditional City and Make a Profit by bane on Thursday July 31, 2014 @09:41AM (#8113963)

You'll notice that this additional burden caused significant development delays and issues over what, 3 or 4 different owners? IIR, the Northern Line extension deal was with one of the previous owners who went out of business trying to service that requirement.

Getting the developers to foot the bill has significantly increased the financial hurdle for developing that part of London.

The Battersea project is a poster child for why developers can't shoulder this kind of expense.

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