1 EƋuitable TƌaŶsit-OƌieŶted DevelopŵeŶt iŶ Diveƌse Subuƌbs: Pƌoŵise aŶd ChalleŶge Willow Lung-Amam, Rolf Pendall, Molly Scott, and Eli Knaap In 2015, the Purple Line is expected to break ground in suburban Maryland. This 16-mile light rail line will extend fƌoŵ Bethesda iŶ MoŶtgoŵeƌLJ CouŶtLJ to Neǁ CaƌƌolltoŶ iŶ PƌiŶĐe Geoƌges CouŶtLJ. In doing so, it will ĐoŶŶeĐt soŵe of the states highest iŶĐoŵe and most impoverished communities. And while new light rail is likely to produce thousands of jobs and reconnect communities to new opportunities around the state and region, there is also widespread concern that it will displace many vulnerable residents and small businesses along the corridor. As land prices around the new transit hubs increase, many low-income communities fear they will not reap the benefits of the states investments, but will instead suffer disproportionately its impacts. Langley Park, a neighborhood largely made up of low-income, recently arrived immigrants, is among the communities that have voiced such concerns, as two Purple Line stops will be built there. County and state officials and planners are grappling with their dire predictions on the eve of the groundbreaking. This moment of uncertainty and active debate offers a lens into a growing national movement for equitable transit-oriented development (TOD). It highlights critical questions for the movement, important goals, strategies, and considerations, and the rapidly changing landscape in which it is taking shape. While fierce battles over displacement because of new transit have been well-documented in many inner city neighborhoods, the battle being waged over the Purple Line is occurring exclusively on suburban turf. Across the country, many suburbs are confronted with similar challenges. Rapidly rising levels of poverty and immigration are producing more socially and economically vulnerable communities on the urban periphery. In 2010, suburbia, once considered the privileged home of the white, middle and upper classes, was home to the majority of minorities, immigrants, and the poor (Frey, 2011; Kneebone and Berube, 2012). Over the last decade, diverse, non-white, and poor suburban areas experienced far greater population gains than either central cities or predominantly white suburbs (Orfield and Luce, 2012; Kneebone and Berube, 2012). Scholarship has shown how this new geography is exacerbating the distressed conditions that already burden many disadvantaged communities. Low homeownership, high crime rates, scarce social and community resources, joblessness, and other issues that have long disproportionately saddled these communities may be less visible and more difficult to address poverty grows in the suburbs (Orfield 1997; Lucy and Phillips 2000; Briggs 2005; Vicino 2008, Hanlon 2010, Kneebone and Garr 2010, Kneebone and Berube 2012). What has often gone under the radar, however, is how policies designed to address suburban sprawl interact with the changing geography of low- income households. Amidst many admirable efforts to retrofit and redevelop suburbs to make them more compact, walkable, mixed-use, and transit-oriented, many disadvantaged communities are faced with the challenge of simply remaining in place. The intersection of these two trends—the rising suburbanization of poverty and immigration, and the suburban retrofit and redevelopment movement—raises serious questions about TOD in an increasingly