Beyond the Tracks: Purple Line community development conference this Friday, March 21st

It escaped my notice that the Maryland Transit Administration organized a conference on leveraging the power of the proposed Purple Line light rail system ("FTA recommends federal funding to build light-rail Purple Line," Washington Post) in Montgomery and Prince George's County for this Friday, called "Beyond the Tracks: Community Development in the Purple Line Corridor." 

It's an all-day conference, starting at 8:30 am and ending at 5:30 pm and will be held at the University of Maryland School of Architecture in College Park, Maryland.


The agenda is packed with a bunch of speakers from around the region and elsewhere (they have a bunch of people from Minneapolis and Denver).

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With regard to Prince George's County, I have a bunch of pieces which argue that the County has been given a second chance to re-orient its planning paradigm towards transit station-centricity.  It did not do this when the various Metro lines were first constructed, which is why despite all the stations, the County hasn't benefited to the same extent as DC, Arlington County, and Montgomery County.

-- The future of mixed use development/urbanization: Part 3, Prince George's County, where's the there?
-- A recommended new planning direction for Prince George's County
-- Another lesson that Prince George's County has a three to five year window to reposition based on visionary transportation planning
-- Frustration #3: the talk about transit oriented development and Prince George's County


Note that I am not the only one who argues this. 

In last week's Gazette, local blogger Bradley Heard (Prince George's Urbanist) argues in an op-ed that PG County still doesn't quite walk the talk, "Prince George’s County vision clouded by sprawl."

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Thank you to NotionsCapital for the heads-up.