EMBRACING CAPITAL INVESTMENT: AN ANALYSIS OF DEVELOPMENT ORIENTED TOWARDS MIAMI’S METRORAIL By JOSEPH DEVER A RESEARCH PROJECT PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER IN URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2021 © 2021 Joseph Dever To public transit users ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you Professor Abhinav Alakshendra, Professor Ruth Steiner, and Aaron DeMayo for your assistance and guidance in completing this research project. More importantly, thank you for your patience in what became a freewheeling document filled with several changes amid the pursuit to connect so many of public transit’s challenges. Even prior to this research project, in my classes with each of you, thank you for helping to shape my view of planning, economics, transportation, and urban design. To Professor Thomas Hawkins and Kyle Dost, thank you for helping the Online program be more accessible and improve its delivery capacity. The importance of broad-based planning knowledge is essential for so many people and this program offers a quality delivery mechanism that other programs lack. I look forward to seeing this program develop and am hopeful for new successes in a profession that has created so many unintended consequences in the past several decades. Within the MURP program, thank you to the faculty and students for emparting your focus, wisdom, and passion for planning. There is truly much work to be done and I am optimistic in our impact on the success of our communities. To my closest friends and colleagues, thank you for listening to my greatest urban planning gripes, including perpetually pointing out good and bad urbanism at the least appropriate and generally irrelevant times. Additionally, thank you for your support in my endeavors and for being there for me through the highs and lows. Thank you to my parents, Bernadette Houghton and Joe Dever, for showing and helping me to be a better person. Without your advice, patience, and support, I certainly would not be where I am today. 4 To Donna, thank you for your support through this program and your enduring patience with my perpetually evolving plans. Thank you for willingly taking public transit whenever we go on vacation—just to see how it works. I promise it is worth the journey. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 4 LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................ 8 LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................ 10 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................... 11 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 14 2. LITERATURE REVIEW .......................................................................................... 17 Ridership ................................................................................................................. 18 Transit-Oriented & Transit Adjacent Development .................................................. 21 Measuring the Built Environment ............................................................................ 23 Summary ................................................................................................................ 25 3. METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................... 26 Selecting a City ....................................................................................................... 26 Qualitative Analysis: Content .................................................................................. 28 Quantitative Approach: The Built Environment ....................................................... 31 Quantitative Analysis – Demographic and Parcel-Level Data ................................. 32 Statistical & GIS Analyses ...................................................................................... 33 Summary ................................................................................................................ 35 4. DATA ...................................................................................................................... 39 Content Analysis ..................................................................................................... 39 Demographic and Parcel Data ................................................................................ 42 Built Environment Data ........................................................................................... 46 5. RESULTS & DISCUSSION ..................................................................................... 55 Station Identities & Context ..................................................................................... 55 Content Analysis ..................................................................................................... 63 Quantitative Analysis .............................................................................................. 66 Future Research & Summary ................................................................................. 72 Qualitative Assessment, History & Discussion ........................................................ 73 6. CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................ 82 APPENDIX 6 A. INDEPENDENT VARIABLE DESCRIPTIONS ........................................................ 91 B. VARIABLE DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS ................................................................ 94 C. SUPPLEMENTAL DATA ANALYSIS FOR 2012 PARCELS ................................... 95 D. CENSUS DATA MD COUNTY ................................................................................ 98 E. SHAPEFILE & RIDERSHIP DATA SOURCES ..................................................... 100 LIST OF REFERENCES ............................................................................................. 107 LIST OF DATA SOURCES ......................................................................................... 110 LIST OF NEWSPAPER REFERENCES ..................................................................... 110 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................... 137 7 LIST OF TABLES Table page Table 3-1. This Table shows station boardings for each station in the Miami Metrorail system between 2016 and 2019. Selected stations for study highlighted. Calculations for percent change and rank orders for number of boardings and percentage change of boardings is also shown. ......................... 36 Table 3-2. This table shows Built Environment variables to be considered in this research. ............................................................................................................ 37 Table 3-3. This table shows data sources, file formats, and relevant information contained in the dataset. .................................................................................... 37 Table 3-4. This table shows demographic and parcel variables to be considered in this research. ...................................................................................................... 38 Table 4-2. Summary Categories showing the number of sub-categories classified as Negative, Neutral, or Positive. ....................................................................... 48 Table 4-3. Results from Ordinary Least Squares Model at the ¼ mile radius with Land Value and Land Improvement Values removed. ........................................ 50 Table 4-4. Results from Ordinary Least Squares model using a ½ mile radius and with Just Value and Effective Year Built variables removed. .............................. 51 Table 4-5. Results showing Ordinary Least Squares Model using a ¼ mile radius to evaluate specific built environment criteria using a physical survey of each intersection in the station catchment areas. ....................................................... 53 Table 5-1. Table showing station name, designation by Renne and Ewing (2013) as TOD/TAD/Hybrid, and the 2019 ridership ranking from the Miami-Dade Technical Ridership Reports (2019). .................................................................. 79 Table 5-2. Table showing Correlated variables categorized by impact. ....................... 79 Table 5-3. Table showing percentage of parcels developed after 1983 (excluding vacant and unbuilt lots) and the boarding rank of the 6 stations studied. ........... 81 Table A-1. Independent Variable Descriptions. ............................................................ 91 Table B-1. This table shows the summary statistics for the analysis of FDOR parcel data within ¼ mile of the six selected stations. ................................................... 94 Table B-2. This table shows the summary statistics for the analysis of FDOR parcel data within ½ mile of the six selected station. ..................................................... 94 8 Table B-3. This table shows the summary statistics for the analysis of 2010 Census data within ¼ mile of the six selected stations. ................................................... 94 Table B-4. This table shows the summary statistics for the analysis