21st Century (2000–present)

Honolulu Oahu General Plan / TOD

2011/2016 · United States · North America · Transit-oriented urbanism and corridor planning · Planned by City & County of Honolulu
Full rail alignment TOD plan map for O‘ahu: the eight Neighborhood TOD Plan areas and Kaka‘ako TOD overlay along the Honolulu rail line, with half-mile station catchments, county zoning and State/City land ownership
Full rail alignment TOD plan map for O‘ahu: the eight Neighborhood TOD Plan areas and Kaka‘ako TOD overlay along the Honolulu rail line, with half-mile station catchments, county zoning and State/City land ownership · © State of Hawai‘i Office of Planning — used with credit · State of Hawai‘i Office of Planning / Hawaii Statewide GIS Program with City & County of Honolulu DPP

Core idea

Rail TOD + climate adaptation

Why it matters

Island metropolis growth without sprawl

Description

Honolulu's planning framework of the 2010s pairs the updated Oahu General Plan with a programme of transit-oriented development plans along the elevated rail line then under construction across the island's southern shore. Prepared by the City and County of Honolulu, the neighbourhood TOD plans, advanced from the mid-2010s, concentrate mixed-use growth, affordable housing and public-realm improvements around stations from East Kapolei towards downtown, while the general plan directs growth away from agricultural and conservation lands. Climate adaptation and sea-level rise figure explicitly in the corridor planning.

Significance

The programme represents an island metropolis attempting to absorb growth without sprawl, using one of the most expensive transit projects in the United States as its spatial spine. It is significant for coupling TOD with Hawaii's acute housing-affordability problem and with coastal climate vulnerability, and the rail project's delays and costs have kept the strategy politically contested. It extends the American TOD tradition into a distinctive insular and Pacific context.

What shaped it

Sources

Open it on the interactive timeline →
hub.toekom.st — History of Urbanism · an interactive timeline of 850 planned cities across 6,000 years.