John Poros (Photo by Megan Bean)
Upcoming STRIDE Workshop Introduce Planning Tools for Linking Rural Development and Transportation
Dr. Brian J. Morton of UNC-Chapel Hill and John Poros, director of the Carl Small Town Center at MSU, will be co-teaching a technical workshop related to their STRIDE-funded project, “A Regional Land-Use Transportation Decision Support Tool for Mississippi” (project #2012-003S), during the National Regional Transportation Conference on June 13-15, 2016 in Chattanooga, Tenn.
via Stride website
“Transportation planners and economic development staff working in small towns or rural communities make strategic decisions about the projects that would best enhance the transportation infrastructure and the strategies that would best promote growth and revitalization,” said Morton, lead PI. “John Poros, Joe Huegy (of NCSU) and I have developed a suite of tools that inform planning for bicycle travel, preservation of community character and regional development.”
Using a case study set in four counties (see image at right) in Northeast Mississippi (a mostly rural area), the STRIDE project generated an easy-to-use tool for assessing bicycle suitability and a land use model integrated with a household-level travel demand model. The project also generated build-out analyses and renderings showing how infill development could increase density while preserving the existing small town feel.
“Community-Viz projected build-outs along with on the ground visualizations provide rural communities with the tools to assess their options for future growth and development,” Poros said. “Combined with transportation modeling that includes bicycling, rural communities can better position themselves to be the green, sustainable communities of tomorrow.”
The workshop will provide an introduction to a suite of tools for rural transportation planning.
A three-hour workshop is scheduled for Tues., June 14. First, Morton will relate the project to current planning initiatives in small towns and rural areas, including heritage and active tourism, livability and sustainability. Poros will then describe the Community Viz®-based build-out analyses and the bicycle suitability assessments, and he will show photo-realistic visualizations of reimagined streetscapes. In the last hour of the workshop, Morton will discuss the integrated land-use/travel-demand model and an application that investigates how to coordinate growth for an area with both automobile manufacturing and heritage tourism.
What can participants expect from this workshop?: How higher density, pedestrian/bike friendly development can be achieved in small towns. How the land-use/travel-demand model works and how different tools can work together.
Information on the conference and workshop is available at the website of the National Association of Development Organizations: http://www.nado.org/events/rpo2016/.