An Emerging High Speed Rail Hub

"[T]rains have also become a key component of efforts by young planners, architects and politicians to re-imagine or revivify American urbanism, with separate piles of federal and state funds - in California's case, nearly $10 billion - already earmarked for a network of new high-speed rail links.

The design for a $180-million train station and transit hub in Anaheim, by the Los Angeles office of the giant architecture firm HOK and engineers from Parsons Brinckerhoff, tries its best to enclose those contradictions under a single vaulted roof. Known officially as the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center, or ARTIC, the planned station is suffused with a sepia-toned futurism - with longing for what will be as well as for what was."

Slated for completion in 2013, the transit station and hub will be a major aspect of the state's high speed rail network. This review is doubtful it will have any great impact on the urbanity of the surrounding areas (not in the short term, at least).