initiated their Transit Station Area Planning Program, which included market studies, coordination with other regional planning efforts, and station area plans (including legally binding requirements for minimum densities, parking maximums, and design guidelines), and sought to identify, create, and promote opportunities for TODs along the planned LRT corridors. Since that time, the region has been pursuing a steady LRT, commuter rail, and streetcar expansion program, which has evolved as decision makers have gained experience with using rail investments to achieve broader community objectives (Cervero et al. 2004).

Development along the 15-mile Eastside LRT line, opened in 1986, has been primarily infill, whereas the 18-mile Westside LRT, opened in 1998, was built largely into greenfields. The latter was one of the first efforts in the nation to combine extensive LRT expansion into the suburbs with deliberate TOD around the stations, connecting previously isolated communities to downtown and to each other and creating new mixed-use pockets of development in the middle of traditional suburbia (Cervero et al. 2004). In 2001, extension of a 5-mile segment to the airport provided the opportunity for a public– private partnership to finance the LRT construction and leverage the development of surplus airport property. In 2004, an inner-city 6-mile extension to the north provided a tool for revitalization in a low-income neighborhood. The newest extension, a 6.5-mile line to the south, is being built on a freeway right-of-way that was set aside for a transit corridor 30 years ago when the Interstate beltway was built (A. Cotugno, personal communication). Two of the most notable examples of TOD in the region, the Pearl District and Orenco Station, are discussed below.

The Pearl District arose from a decision to use construction of the Portland streetcar line as a means to leverage large-scale redevelopment of a functionally obsolete warehouse and industrial zone in downtown Portland. The city entered into an innovative agreement with developers, requiring them to meet ambitious housing density levels