This tool helps create equitable development in communities surrounding the Purple Line

As part of a larger effort to spur equitable transit-oriented development (TOD) around Maryland’s forthcoming Purple Line light rail, I’ve been working with researchers at the University of Maryland’s National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education (NCSG) to build a tool to provide access to land use planning information in the Purple Line corridor.

Upon completion, Maryland’s Purple Line project will span Montgomery and Prince George’s counties from New Carrollton to Bethesda and connect to the existing Metro transit system. It’s a massive infrastructure investment that is already bringing further investment to the area. This economic development presents massive benefits to locals such as increasing transportation access, decreasing pollution, and creating jobs.

The value of commercial and residential real estate in the area is increasing, as well; but it’s not great for everyone. Increasing cost burdens may displace residents and businesses from the corridor, and they won’t share in the project’s benefits. (Greater Greater Washington wrote about similar impacts in Langley Park).

To combat this potential outcome, the Purple Line Corridor Coalition (PLCC) formed a community development agreement among businesses, nonprofits, government agencies, and community groups to make sure the Purple Line benefits are shared equitably among all residents and workers in the area. (Disclosure: NCSG is the administrative home of the Purple Line Corridor Coalition.) The PLCC coalesced around four major goals:

• Housing choices for all
• Support and grow local business
• Build a thriving labor market
• Support vibrant communities

PLCC’s key strategies to fight displacement of residents include increasing the supply and diversity of housing and preserving existing affordable housing in the corridor. But there’s a barrier to doing so: the complex regulatory environment that governs land use in the two counties. Overlapping, interdependent, and conflicting factors regarding land use are difficult to pull together for any given place in the corridor.

For example, which areas are being considered for upzoning? Where do various local, state, and federal development incentives apply? Where are in-lieu fees for parking or school districts reduced or eliminated?

Accounting for the full stack of restrictions, incentives, fees, and discounts that apply to a property is a big part of identifying whether it is worth developing in the first place. Developers must also consider how much housing, of various types, is viable there.

Our tool helps people easily locate plans and regulations in a given area

These complexities take resources to navigate. That’s why we created the Plans and Regulations Information Tool, which provides easy access to a curated database of plans and regulations in the corridor. Most of our data comes from outside sources like government open data portals.

For the purposes of this tool, we define “plans” and “regulations” broadly. In this case, regulations are any legally binding rights, incentives, or constraints on land development. Plans are any documents that express intentions or visions of important organizations within the corridor. This loose definition is important because the tool includes non-governmental documents that might have direct or indirect effects on the corridor, like WMATA’s strategic plan or the Capital Trails Coalition’s network vision.

The real power of the tool is to (very quickly) answer the general question underpinning those mentioned above: “What plans or regulations apply to this place?” And since the Purple Line corridor spans multiple jurisdictions, we bring all the data together in one place.

Users have many options to define an area of interest in the tool such as inputting an address or property parcel ID; drawing a point, line, or shape on the map; and uploading their own geographic data. From there, users can query which plans or regulations apply in the designated area and export a sharable report of the results.

These capacities allow housing developers to cut through regulatory complexity, thus removing barriers to investment in the Purple Line corridor and reducing the resources required to do so. Instead of spending time and resources repeatedly compiling plans and regulations for a prospective site, they can quickly pull the full list.

Though real estate development in the Purple Line corridor is an obvious use case, we built the tool to equip any stakeholders within the corridor that need to identify the stack of land use plans and regulations in a given area. A number of other use cases already exist (and we envision many more):

• A housing advocacy group working across the corridor uses the tool to identify alignments, gaps, or mismatches in housing plans and policy to help them advocate against displacement.
• A nonprofit developer uses the tool in tandem with their own data to identify and pursue deeply affordable housing opportunities.
• A small business development group uses the tool to identify ongoing plans for wayfinding and signage in certain areas of interest to engage with the planning processes.

The plans and regulations accessed by the tool are intentionally not comprehensive; they are curated by staff at NCSG with input from PLCC members and other stakeholders to reflect information relevant to development in the corridor. (If you think something should be included that is missing, let us know!)

Of course, this tool is not going to single-handedly prevent all negative effects of the Purple Line. However, it can be a piece of the larger effort to make sure the benefits of the Purple Line investment accrue equitably.

How would you use the tool? We’d love to hear from you: use the tutorial to get started, then complete our feedback form.