When conjuring municipal exemplars of smart growth, Tempe, Arizona, is not the first place that usually comes to mind. But the city of Tempe and ValleyMetro, the transit authority that provides the region's spiffy new light rail system, have just created an amazing facility that in one place embodies the best of smart growth, green building, and sustainable transportation. The Tempe Transportation Center and the Metro light rail line opened to considerable fanfare in December.
Among the site's attributes, perhaps the "greenest" is its essential function as an intermodal transportation hub, connecting the downtown (and Arizona State University) light rail station with eleven bus lines, walkable downtown and university destinations (I can well imagine the congestion relief provided by the Center's proximity to Sun Devil Stadium), cycling routes, and a wonderful bike station that provides secure indoor storage, showers for bike commuters, and a bike repair shop. But it gets better: also on the site are a relaxing public plaza with shade (essential in Arizona), and a mixed-use building that is probably the state's greenest, on track to receive LEED-platinum certification (though certification has not been awarded yet).
(Top photo by City of Tempe; bottom photo by Rail Life, creative commons license.) For more photos and information, go here.
Kaid Benfield writes occasional "Village Green" commentary on this site and (almost) daily on NRDC's Switchboard site about community, development, and the environment. For daily posts, see my Switchboard blog's home page.