Development In Prince George's County/ Other PGC News
Development In Prince George's County/ Other PGC News
During Angela Alsobrooks's inauguration speech, she reiterated her plan to re-invest in Largo, Maryland. She said that if the Washington Commanders choose to stay or go, she is going to give Largo the development it needs. Again, she reiterated this priority in a newsletter to residents. We outlined this in our last newsletter. The town is along the blue line metro stop, where housing and retail development is happening.
At the beginning of this week, Wes Moore’s administration granted Prince George’s County $400 million dollars to develop that region. “Our intention is to be the economic engine of the state as well as the region,” said Alsobrooks to the Board of Public Works, Gov. Moore and Brooke Lierman, the first woman comptroller.
“This funding will help us build a youth sports field house, an amphitheater, a library/cultural center, a market hall, and a civic plaza,” Alsobrooks tweeted. “We are going to ensure residents in those communities finally receive the investments they have missed out on for far too long.”
Prince George’s County is implementing a certain kind of urban development and redevelopment. It is called Transit-Oriented Development, often referred to as T.O.D. This kind of development centers around subway/transit stations. This means wherever there is a subway hub — the development of new housing, restaurants, and stores surround it. The goal is to keep businesses and housing relatively close to the metro center so that residents can walk to places instead of driving. The Purple Line, under construction in North County, is also an example of T.O.D.
Prince George’s County has documents detailing its goal to redevelopment the county and its major transit centers, spanning from South to North County. This list includes:
What Are The Prose and Cons of T.O.D?
Dr. Seunghoon Kim did some research around this topic. You can read it here. An excerpt:
Transit-oriented development (TOD) is often considered a solution for automobile dependency in the pursuit of sustainability. Although TOD has shown various benefits as sustainable development and smart growth, there are potential downsides, such as transit-induced gentrification (TIG). Even if there were no displacement issues with TIG, existing residents could be disadvantaged by a TOD due to affordability problems. This study focuses on these potential affordability issues and aims to evaluate the effects of TOD using residents’ discretionary income (DI) as an indicator of affordability.
Prince George’s County has a perfect example of what T.O.D can look like in practice. D.C. has used Transit Oriented Development to reshape its neighborhoods, which has resulted in gentrification. It is not clear that gentrification will be any result of Prince George’s County’s version of T.O.D. However, there are some residents who are concerned. It doesn’t have to end in gentrification. There are other alternatives.
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