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Figure 7.4
Aerial perspective of Metro Center.
We were able to refine and develop a project that
was already in the planning stages to maximize its
potential as a catalyst for adjacent transit-friendly
and sustainable development.
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illustrated higher density residential development in
the form of three- and four-story apartments. On the
east side of the tracks we redesigned an existing retail
center along an adjacent major north–south street as
a three- and four-story mixed-use development of
offices and shops, with the potential also for some
live-work unit and adjacent high-density apartments.
A new street beneath the tracks improves connectiv-
ity and leads to a new civic building, possibly a
YMCA fitness facility or a small school, indicated in
purple in Plate 18.
Between 1/4-mile and 1/2-mile from the station
area, we scaled down development to a mix of town-
homes and narrow-lot, single-family homes. We laid
out the remaining property beyond the 1/2-mile
radius with similar development, backing it up to
and screening it from revitalized small commercial
buildings fronting adjacent streets. This develop-
ment pattern provides the necessary variety of hous-
ing options for a successful urban village, while
respecting the topography and natural features on
the site, in particular the creek that traverses the site.
By enhancing the required environmental buffers
along the creek, we created a small linear park for the
neighborhood and the Center. It’s important to note
that houses 
front
onto this park, providing visual
security. It is rarely a good idea to back houses up to
public green space, unless it is a publicly maintained
greenway or a large area. The lessons about buildings
facing onto public space that were discussed in
Chapter 4 apply here. This park would also make an
excellent corridor for a greenway that could tie trails
in the RTP to the train station area.
North Morrisville Neighborhood 
Center (see Plate 19)
Morrisville is the only town wholly within the study
area. It has suffered from being under the flight path
to and from the Raleigh-Durham International
Airport as well as being sandwiched directly between
the wealthy community of Cary to the south and the
RTP to the north. As a consequence of airport noise,
development has been limited, and the town has had
to cope with a lot of commuting traffic. Overall,
Morrisville has not been able to turn its location next
to the major employment center of the RTP to its
advantage, and we saw this new regional plan as
providing the town with the vision and means to
overcome these difficulties.
The area is complex. Morrisville’s jurisdiction
includes the future extension of a regional interstate
highway, the TTA rail corridor and the 65 DNL
(average day/night noise level) contour line from the
airport. The town is home to the small but historic
African-American community of Shiloh, which is left
undeveloped just to the west of the five-minute walk
radius from the train station shown in Plate 19.
This area’s proximity to major employment centers
and new road and rail connections suggests that rede-
velopment is very likely over the next 10–20 years. To
structure this growth, we recommended that: 
A new
Neighborhood Center should be created in the north
Morrisville area that includes a new transit station for
commuter rail and the CORE transit loop
.
Where our new transit loop crosses the proposed
rail line is an excellent location for another TOD that
would create a focal point and hierarchy to the devel-
opment in the southern part of the study area. The
location of this new multimodal station would enable
the southern portion of the RTP to be served effi-
ciently with high-quality, secure transit service from
the employers’ front doors or parking areas to the air-
port and to other destinations on the commuter rail
line, including downtown Raleigh and N.C. State
University. This would require a new grade-separated
bridge for extending a new major road across the rail
corridor, as the route for buses or streetcars on the
transit loop. The transit station is located, as always,
at the center of the five and 10-minute walking radii.
The southeastern portion of this new urban
village falls within the airport noise contour that
restricts residential development due to decibel
levels, and so we designed this area as a mixed-
commercial Village Center based around offices and
some neighborhood retail (blue and red buildings
in Plate 19). We located residential development
(shown in yellow and orange) to the north of this
area (beyond the 65 dB noise contour) as well as on
the west side of the area.
The land squeezed between the north–south road
and rail corridors provided the opportunity for
higher density housing close to the transit station
with apartments and townhomes. These have smaller
footprints than commercial buildings and can take
better advantage of the narrow sites. Because of the
ownership pattern and larger tracts of land on the
west side of the tracks, we laid out the residential
development there as a medium-density traditional
neighborhood with a predominately single-family
character, though we included some townhomes and
condominiums (not more than 30 percent of the
total number of units) in order to maintain the
density figures best suited for the TOD.
DESIGN FIRST: DESIGN-BASED PLANNING FOR COMMUNITIES
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CHAPTER SEVEN
●
THE REGION
165
A general rule of TOD design requires the highest
densities of the development be located within 
1/4-mile of the station platform, but here we made
an exception due to the lopsided nature of the area,
constrained in the eastern and southern quadrants by
the airport noise contour that largely eliminated resi-
dential development in those locations. We therefore
allowed higher density residential development to
stretch further north adjacent to the main road and
rail line, and we took advantage of a new linear park
opportunity to the northwest, where an existing
creek could be enhanced and framed with town
homes. The increased density of the townhomes
would be needed to pay for the two-single frontage
streets that run along the park’s edges.
RTP Service Center (see Figure 7.5 
and Plate 20)
This is our third example of a mixed-use activity cen-
ter, and illustrates a smaller scale intervention into the
loose suburban form of the study area. The dispersed
campus development pattern of the RTP presented
only a few opportunities to inject mixed-use develop-
ment close to the large office and research buildings.
One such opportunity was the Triangle Metro Center
described earlier. Another is the RTP Service Center
near a large hotel, the Governor’s Inn, a location that
was intended to provide retail and support services for
the initial tenants of the RTP. The RTP has grown sig-
nificantly since this local site was first planned, and it
presented us with an opportunity to upgrade the
Service Center to promote new development that
would meet the changing needs of RTP employees.
Our recommendation therefore was: 
Redevelop
the RTP Service Center as a small scale mixed-use
Neighborhood Center, providing an improved ‘front
door’ for the Governor’s Inn
.
Our simple concept for redevelopment is shown in
Plate 20, illustrating new multistorey, mixed-use build-
ings for retail, restaurants and offices. The buildings
screen their parking and front directly onto the main
road to create an improved streetscape together with
a new formalized front lawn and visual gateway to the
Governor’s Inn (compare to Figure 7.5). One or more
of the office buildings could easily be replaced by apart-
ments if the market conditions were favorable. Our
proposed CORE transit loop would cross through this
area with a stop that could serve the Governor’s Inn,
the new mixed-use buildings, and some existing office
buildings to the west of the Service Center.