Millennials are driving today’s transformation of major urban centers, according to a fall 2014 Cushman & Wakefield report. Many are opting to ditch cars as long as they can live within walking distance of amenity-rich areas and easily catch transit when they’re looking to venture beyond their neighborhood hub. In just six years, C&W reports, they’ll make up more than half of the global workforce. This expanding cohort of workers born since 1982 is likely to turbocharge another phenomenon with important ramifications for commercial practitioners: the demand for so-called transit-oriented development.

These mixed-use areas in cities and suburbs are located a half-mile or less from public transportation and typically occur in higher-density communities. Along with improving access to jobs, such developments spur other benefits, including reductions in driving rates, road congestion, and greenhouse gas emissions. Perhaps the most radical departure of all from conventional development priorities, onsite parking is typically a minimal or nonexistent part of the plan.

However, like the millennials themselves, TODs have matured since they first emerged. In some cases, neighborhood activists are pushing for TODs. And where they’re not on consumers’ radar, developers are fine-tuning their strategies to seek meaningful community involvement. Smart developers understand they need to offer more than just proximity to transit. Their projects need to reflect the changing lifestyles of younger consumers who are more likely to be tethered to their electronic gadgets than to a vehicle—a reality that lenders are starting to grasp as well.

Since the late 1990s, TOD has been a force in the development world, says David Dixon, an urban planner at Stantec in Boston. The Great Recession, however, changed TOD’s trajectory.

“Transit’s ability to really incent development—and a different kind of development, of walkable communities—first became recognized in the late 1990s and early 2000s,” he explains. “But coming out of the recession there’s been so much more awareness of the power of cities to attract people, the interest in walkable environments, and the desire to not have a car. ”

Data has begun emerging showing that TOD improves property values. A 2009 study by CEOs for Cities found that in 13 of the 15 markets analyzed, increased walkability in a neighborhood was directly linked to higher home values.

Fitzhugh Stout, senior managing director of the Charlotte, N.C., office of Integra Realty Resources, a real estate valuation company, studied the effect of a light rail line that opened in his area in 2007. He found properties had increased in value from 5 percent to 73 percent since then, and the most dramatic increases came from changes in zoning that permitted increased density. “Everywhere in the country, people talk about reducing parking and getting higher density in development,” he says. “Transit has allowed that to happen.”

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Jackson agrees with colleagues that planning for parking can be tricky. At Shady Grove, townhomes have attached parking for one or two cars while rentals have fewer allotted parking spaces. “One consideration is who’s moving into the units. You may be doing larger units targeted for empty nesters. They may be less willing to give up their cars,” he says. You also have to think about what amenities are within walking distance. The higher the Walk Score, the less parking you need.

Bottom line: You can’t just throw up a development near a subway station and call it a day. Transportation (and not necessarily rail; good bus service also qualifies), walkability, and neighborhood amenities are all factors in successful TOD, he says. “It’s a dynamic analysis.”