'Cargo Oriented Development' Brings Life To Industrial Areas

10 November 2007 - 5:00am

This piece from Smart Growth Online looks at transit oriented development near transit and freight facilities -- dubbed "cargo oriented development" -- as discusses how it can create value in neglected industrial areas.

"Among the many benefits of smart growth initiatives, building off a community’s underutilized transit and freight assets is a development strategy that can offer a rich combination of paybacks: business and job growth, viable local small businesses, cost savings for the average household, and increased home ownership opportunities."

"Linking development strategies to infrastructure that has become undervalued—once an asset to the region that in many cases spurred its early development—can reinvigorate the often neglected older, industrial communities of a region."

"Transit-oriented development (TOD) and cargo-oriented development (COD), taken together, is an effective community development and smart growth strategy in which the downtown and industrial areas of older suburbs are redeveloped simultaneously, in part by leveraging each suburb’s transportation assets."

Source: Smart Growth Online, November 8, 2007
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