By Juliette Michaelson, Director of Strategic Initiatives, RPA

The crowded sprawl of São Paulo is very different than the bucolic charms of Stockholm. And Los Angeles, where car is king, is a world away from Singapore, where the government limits the number of vehicle registrations issued. Nevertheless, these cities have one thing in common: transit systems their residents depend on.

Last month in New York, 19 senior executives of those and eight other transit agencies representing nine countries and four continents got together to discuss the successes and challenges they shared. What they found was a surprising amount of common ground.

The three-day Transit Leadership Summit, organized by RPA and funded by the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations and C40, gave the chief executives of some of the biggest and most dynamic transit agencies from around the world the opportunity to meet each other in an intimate setting and off the record - a rare occasion in this day and age. (Several of these executives stayed on and spoke at RPA's annual conference, the Regional Assembly, held later that week.)

After three days of structured discussions and informal meals, a new network of peers emerged. And despite the very different urban, financial and political contexts in which the transit agencies operate, the common threads that weaved them together were unmistakable:

• The quality of the transit experience cannot be underestimated. A convenient, attractive and comfortable experience on the train or bus is key to allowing transit agencies to grow their customer base - as well as their revenue. This is not just about frequency and speed of service: it's about amenities (comfortable seats, wireless data communications), communicating effectively with customers, and branding. Many transit systems offer wi-fi or cellular in stations or tunnels, allowing passengers to make more productive use of their commuting time. Montreal and Santiago have succeeded in knitting together a disparate set of transit services into one unified network from the customer's perspective. Washington, D.C., and New York are looking to adopt a new fare-collection system that would allow customers to swipe with their credit cards or cell phones, as London is planning to do this summer on its buses. Mexico City, Stockholm and others highlight the environmental benefits of transit use, a branding strategy that improves the visibility of the system and builds the political case for supporting transit with tax revenue.
• It's difficult to raise fares everywhere. And yet, some cities are more successful at balancing the need for revenue with the desire to provide a service that is affordable to a range of users. In Hong Kong and Singapore, a formula is structured by an independent body every few years, with scheduled fare increases to reflect inflation and increases in labor costs, which helps to greatly cut down on annual political battles. Several cities, including Santiago, also have successfully designed fare systems that charge lower fares to those who need them. The emergence of "social fares" could be an important development for transit authorities, whose main form of revenue have always been considered regressive taxation.
• Except for a handful of cities, public-sector funding for new transit construction projects is becoming more limited. But there are a number of compelling alternative ways to pay for capital projects: value capture, either by having the transit agency engage directly in redevelopment (Hong Kong, Los Angeles) or by setting up a special taxing zone (New York City) around stations; public-private partnerships (Barcelona, London, São Paulo and others), and congestion pricing (London).

RPA hopes to organize two more such gatherings, one each in Asia and Europe, in the next two years, to foster continued communication among transit leaders.

By Petra Todorovich, Director of America 2050, RPA

Housing prices will continue to rise. There will be plenty of mortgage money available. Buyers will want bigger and better homes. Buying is better than renting. People will accept a long commute to live in a nice house.

These long-held beliefs about the housing market have been upended by America's economic doldrums and the bursting of the housing bubble, says Peter Reinhart, director of the Kislak Real Estate Institute at Monmouth University. Reinhart was one of a group of housing experts on a panel at RPA's Regional Assembly last month that looked at the changing housing market.

Driving the change is the evolution of America's demographic profile, as the most significant population cohort of the 20th century — the baby boom generation — moves into retirement. Boomers, born from 1946 to 1964, fueled demand for the prototypical single-family house in the suburbs during their child-rearing years, which came to dominate U.S. housing stock. The boomers are now reaching the period in their lives when they no longer need the large houses in which they raised their children.

Take two key types of households in the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut region: traditional families of a married couple with one or more kids, and single people living alone. From 1970 — 2010, the number of married-with-kids households dropped by almost a half million, from 2.2 million to 1.7 million, an analysis of census data shows. In the same period, the number of households composed of a single person living alone grew by more than one million, from 1.2 million to 2.2 million households in the tri-state region.

But an enormous overhang of family-oriented houses isn't inevitable, said Dowell Myers, a professor of urban planning and demography at University of Southern California. That's because America's immigrants, for whom home ownership is a top priority, could drive a large portion of the market for homes that will come available as baby boomers downsize.

Home-ownership rates among immigrants have soared, Myers notes. Starting with immigrants arriving in the 1970s, homeownership rates rose by about 13% for each decade that they stayed in the country. For immigrants arriving in the 1970s, their homeownership rate was over 70% by 2000, just above the level of native-born Americans.

An "intergenerational partnership" of buyers and sellers — the boomers and the immigrants — would provide boomers with the return on the investment they are anticipating and the immigrants with the upward mobility they seek, he said.

Fatima Shama, commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs in New York City, whose office tracks statistics on immigrants in New York City, confirmed that home ownership is a top priority for New York City's one million immigrant households. For many immigrants, home ownership is the sign of "making it" in America.

Even if a large market emerges for the existing homes in the U.S., it is clear there is a mismatch between the current housing stock and the growing demand for more apartments and condominiums, in mixed-use, walkable environments with amenities that appeal to millennials (born 1980 — 2000) and downsizing boomers alike.

But even in the densely developed New York metropolitan region, rental and multifamily housing is a tough sell with local zoning boards that tend to shun multifamily housing for fear it will bring school children with higher tax burdens. Bringing the New York region's housing supply up to speed with the region's housing demand faces the same fundamental paradox of regional planning: local control of land use regulations, requiring painstaking zoning reform on a municipality-by-municipality basis.

Kislak Institute's Reinhart, who spent the first 30 years of his career with Hovnanian Enterprises, New Jersey's largest housing developer, noted that developers will build whatever the market wants. The key questions are, will potential homeowners have the money to buy, and will zoning codes permit developers to build what people want?

Large real estate projects can make enormous contributions to the economic health, livability and environmental sustainability of New York City when key principles for sustainable development are followed.

In a new study, Regional Plan Association draws on lessons from the past to recommend policies for redevelopment initiatives that encompass entire city neighborhoods.

Over the next four decades, New York City might need as much as a billion square feet of new housing, office, retail and other space. This much new development will require creativity, careful planning and an approach that spurs economic prosperity while fostering a more livable urban environment.

To address these priorities, RPA is recommending a series of principles for future large development initiatives:

Some of the news coverage of RPA's 22nd annual Regional Assembly on April 27, 2012:

• MTA Chairman Dreams of Eventually Extending 7 Line Down the West Side (NY1)
• NY Transit shies away from "revolution" (Reuters)
• Roll the 7 to Chelsea: MTA (New York Post)
• NY MTA Chief Lhota: 'Yes' To Extending 7 Train Extension, 'No' To Free Ferry (WNYC)
• New and Old MTA Chiefs on the Political Toxicity of Congestion Pricing (Capital New York)
• New York City's Complete Streets Are Built to Last (Streetsblog NYC)

Mayor Michael Bloomberg told a packed audience at RPA's 2012 Regional Assembly on Friday that New York's challenge is to continually work to encourage people to come and thrive here.

In a keynote address before some 800 business, civic and political leaders and planning experts, Bloomberg expressed optimism about the city's prospects, noting that New York diversity and concentration of talent is unparalleled anywhere in the world. (Watch the video) He cited RPA's essential role in transforming the region, helping to create more sustainable communities and open spaces such as Governors Island to the public.

The mayor's speech was one of more than a dozen presentations and debates Friday as part of the Regional Assembly, sponsored by Siemens, at the Waldorf-Astoria. (See links to additional video, >below.)

Participants also heard MTA Chairman & CEO Joe Lhota make news saying he would like to see the #7 subway line extended down the west side after the new station at 34th Street and 11th Avenue opens in late 2013.