In the Golden State of cookie-cutter houses in sprawling bedroom communities, home ownership comes with doses of road rage swallowed during commutes from hell. Fortunately, planners are learning it's wise to roll back the clock and build communities that historically make more sense.

With some of the highest home prices in the nation and inventories of buildable land (for both housing and highways) being gobbled up by development and green belt demarcation, California has little choice but to embrace smarter growth policies if it wants to keep open the gates to paradise.

From now until about 2025, 11 million to 16 million more people will become Californians and the state will need some 4 million homes to house them. That's greater growth than the state experienced during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s -- combined.

Housing people and moving them from home to work, to school, to shopping, elsewhere and back is one of the biggest New Millennium challenges for the nation's most populous state.

A sound answer is "transit oriented development" or TOD, according to the landmark "Statewide Transit-Oriented Development Study: Factors for Success in California," a comprehensive 14-month study of the latest TOD developments in California and across the United States.

Completed late last year by the state's Division of Mass Transportation, the study says TOD is crucial because it's viable in both urban and suburban settings, provided development is not simply adjacent to transit, but shaped by transit in terms of parking, density, and building orientation.

"A successful TOD will reinforce both the community and the transit system," writes associate transportation planner Terry Parker, the report's project manager and co-author.

A well-conceived and developed TOD is designed to focus compact growth around transit stops to bring riders closer to transit facilities, to encourage walkable infill development, and to help save what's left of California's slice of the planet.

If you build it, the study says, they will come to enjoy quantifiable benefits.

Containing many elements of the so-called "new urbanism" or "neo-traditionalist" developments named for a more traditional pedestrian-friendly, easy-access-to-essentials approach to development, TOD offers a variety of benefits to residents, communities, regions, and the state as a whole.

According to the study, the major benefits are:

Published: June 6, 2003

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A journalist for 35-years, Broderick Perkins parlayed an old-school daily newspaper career into a digital news service offering editorial content and consulting services. Perkins' San Jose, CA-based DeadlineNews Group includes the flagship news site, DeadlineNews.Com, offering real estate, personal finance and consumer journalism, and a backshop, the Deadline Newsroom.