As the line between rural and urban space have blurred over time, the clarity of this boundary is needed once again. Public transportation, and specifically rail, is one tool that can bring a sense of urbanity back to the city, developing the city about transit stations and the scale of the pedestrian, rather than the nebulous streetscapes and limitless suburbs constructed for the automobile. Following a period of vast over construction in America, people are beginning to reconsider the suburban life and look again at the numerous benefits of city living.
Based upon the guidelines of New Urbanism town planning, a new form of urban design has recently emerged. The Transit-Oriented Design (TOD) was founded on the concept that public transit and the pedestrian are the primary design concern within a community. The needs of the automobile should not detract from the environment but rather become integrated within a people-oriented community. Traditionally, TODs have been implemented in suburban locations, in newly planned towns or in generally more remote settings. They offer a newer, and more detached version of what our cities used to offer. It is becoming apparent that TODs must be utilized in order to restore a needed sense of urban living: a pedestrian scaled, dense, urban context. If people have begun to search for a denser urban environment, the downtowns of American cities must act as the model for newer suburban reinterpretation.
Cincinnati is among those cities that require drastic downtown re-urbanization. The city has become riddled with expansive parking lots, leaving gaping wounds in the center of the city. One of the largest wounds within the city center is Broadway Commons. Now mostly parking lots, it serves only the automobile, completely disregarding the pedestrian and the urban scale of downtown. The only memory that remains of public transportation and the pedestrian is the Greyhound station, currently in a state of disrepair, with no connection to the surrounding urban fabric and its community. This thesis aims to integrate a redesigned Greyhound station within a revitalized urban landscape, comprised of community and transit.
As Cincinnati begins to move toward a more efficient and expansive transit system, a TOD would be an appropriate strategy to apply to a new Broadway Commons district. This thesis aims to develop a strategy to develop a neighborhood center, with transit as the core, to create a better sense of community, place and urbanism for the city of Cincinnati.