STUART SIROTA
Baltimore, Maryland

AFFILIATION: Senior Planner, Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade and Douglas, Inc.

AREA OF EXPERTISE: Urban planning generalist with emphasis on public transit, land use, and geographic information systems

BACKGROUND & EXPERIENCE: Stuart has an extensive background in planning and has focused on the integration of transportation and land use, GIS, transit facility, and service planning. His primary area of interest is in applying these planning skills to support smart growth and New Urbanist principles that make places more walkable, human-scaled, environmentally sustainable, and socially equitable.

RESEARCH INTERESTS: Stuart's project will be on measuring the benefits of New Urbanism. The social, economic, and environmental consequences of suburban sprawl have been increasingly decried. Yet, the negative effects of sprawl have been difficult to quantify. New planning technology and methodologies are emerging that have begun to allow communities to make better-informed decisions about how to grow or redevelop. This project will focus on incorporating New Urbanist principles into one of these new GIS-based planning tools, called PLACE3S, with the goal of bringing greater clarity in understanding the consequences of alternative land use patterns. A case study of a planned rail line outside Washington, DC, will be examined. The effects of implementing transit oriented development around future rail stations versus maintaining status quo development patterns will be measured in terms of such factors as jobs-housing balance, walkability, transit ridership, and energy consumption.