In the News

Ann Arbor refrain: Density, mass transit

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

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Downtown Living, Mass Transit, Redevelopment

Ann Arbor

Even North Carolina newspapers are noticing the improvements to downtown Ann Arbor.

Excerpt:

The hometown of the University of Michigan has seen the future -- and it is dense.

It's also pretty much without cars.

That's what the more than 100 attendees at the Inter-City Visit and Leadership Conference heard Sunday from their Michigan counterparts on the first day of their visit. In a driving rainstorm, the Orange County visitors toured downtown Ann Arbor, the multiple campuses of the University of Michigan and the university's medical center complex.

And everywhere they went, they heard the same refrain:

"We want to show you the advantages of density and how we are re-tooling our entire community for mass transit," Peter Allen, an Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce executive, a real estate developer and a University of Michigan faculty member, told the visitors during a bus tour of the area.

"We are densifying our downtown and trying to eliminate cars from the community because we believe that there are environmental advantages, public health advantages and safety advantages to doing so."

Read the rest of the story here.