Here Comes the Neighborhood, Christopher B. Leinberger, The Atlantic Magazine, June 2010

Conventional suburbs are overbuilt and out of favor. In cities and suburbs alike, walkable neighborhoods linked by train are the future. Here’s how a new network of privately funded rail lines can make that future come to pass more quickly and cheaply—and help reinvigorate housing and the economy.

Urban-style housing in walkable neighborhoods—including those in the inner suburbs—is what’s in demand today. And for a variety of reasons, that demand will intensify in the coming years. Only by serving it can the country kick-start growth in an enormous and essential part of the economy.

Yet the creation of new, attractive urban spaces is slow and difficult, and becomes all but impossible without substantial new infrastructure. Most of all, it relies on good transit options—especially rail links—around which walkable neighborhoods can develop. Rail, biking, and walking infrastructure is the backbone of urban development, and as a country we’ve for the most part neglected to build it in recent decades, in favor of new roads for new suburbs farther and farther away from metropolitan hubs. To support growth in the next decade, we need to change that dynamic—and nourish our walkable urban spaces and neighborhoods. Complicating matters, in these cash-strapped times we need to find a way to do so on the cheap.

The article discusses ways to finance the public transit needed to make these kinds of neighborhoods possible. These include "tax-increment financing" used in Chicago, "special-assessment districts" used in DC to build a station in the 1990s, and changing federal transportation laws to provide more funds and take less time to approve public transit proposals.

Here's the link to this article that looks at building neighborhoods and linking them through privately-funded transit.

In fact, the Atlantic Monthly has a whole blog on The Future of the City. Check it out!