New Book Explores History and Future of Rail in Northwest Arkansas

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Faculty, staff and students at the Fay Jones School of Architecture’s award-winning Community Design Center visualize a greener, more urban future for the Northwest Arkansas region in the new book NWA Rail: Visioning Rail Transit in Northwest Arkansas. Steve Luoni, director of the University of Arkansas Community Design Center, has met with various civic groups to discuss the possibility of light rail in northwest Arkansas and will lead a public presentation and discussion at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, July 30, in the Walker Community Room of the Fayetteville Public Library. A companion exhibition will be on display in the library’s reading room from mid-July through August.

Thanks to a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a $4,500 grant from the University of Arkansas Women’s Giving Circle and $16,000 in discretionary funding from the provost’s office, 2,300 copies of the book will be distributed for free to business leaders, government officials and anyone in the area who is interested in sustainable development. Copies of the book will be distributed at no charge following Luoni’s presentation at the Fayetteville Public Library.

Though the topic is complex, the book makes a compelling case for light rail with maps, charts and, most especially, graphics that show the possibilities of transit-oriented development.

“This book is designed to help people imagine what this place could be,” Luoni said. “Could downtown Springdale be cool again? You bet,” he added, flipping open the book to a series of images that show the transformation of Springdale’s Emma Street to a tree-shaded nexus of cafes, small businesses and housing bustling with people. The focal point of the final image – a light rail train easing down the center of the street – provides the key to this kind of development.

“We can use transportation planning to reinvent places that are just languishing,” Luoni said, adding that many of the cities that have recently been awarded federal dollars for light rail are following a “build it and they will come” philosophy. Cities such as Charlotte, N.C., and Nashville, Tenn. – both less densely populated than northwest Arkansas – “have flipped the whole game – they’re building the transportation system to get the urbanism they want,” Luoni said.

The 162-page, full-color book culminates a three-year research effort to study the feasibility of light rail in northwest Arkansas. Luoni decided to pursue the idea because “it makes sense here. Eighty years ago this area was a rail region, and because of that, two-thirds of our population live within one mile of the rail right-of-way. There’s enormous potential to be tapped,” he said.

The light rail study involved architecture students and faculty from the University of Arkansas and Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., as well as nationally recognized experts in urban design and planning: William Conway, a Minneapolis-based architect and planner, and Eric Kahn, a principal with the Los Angeles firm Central Office of Architecture.

The project has won three national awards, the most recent being a 2008 Honor Award for Regional and Urban Design from the American Institute of Architects, and has been exhibited in Boston, Mass.; Washington, D.C.; San Antonio, Texas; Cincinnati, Ohio; St. Louis, Mo., Knoxville, Tenn.; and Nashville, Tenn. Luoni hopes to find an exhibition venue in northwest Arkansas.

Organizations interested in having Steve Luoni speak on the benefits of light rail and smart growth should contact Linda Komlos at 479-575-5772.