PLAN-115: Transit Oriented Development Toolbox

PLAN-115: Transit Oriented Development Toolbox


Course Access
6 months

Instructors
John L. Renne, Ph.D., AICP
Shelley Poticha
Jeffrey S. Wood

Registration
$99.00

AICP CM Credits
This course has been approved to provide 4 CM credits.

Please Note:
Course materials are accessible for 6 months from the day of registration. Enroll anytime!

Transit-oriented development (TOD) has gained popularity as a strategy to address a number of urban problems, including traffic congestion, affordable housing shortages, air pollution, and sprawl. Transit Oriented Development Toolbox will be useful to planners, developers, architects, policy makers, students, and advocates.

Topics covered in this self-paced course include Smart Growth and Sustainable Development: Understanding the Context for TOD; The Importance of Urban Design in TOD; Land Use and Parking in TOD; The Public Sector: Roles for Local Government, MPOs, State Government, and Transit Agencies; Value Capture, Joint-Development, and the Private Sector; and Financing TODs. Transit Oriented Development Toolbox offers a user-friendly online forum to network and discuss these issues with the instructors and other students.

• Video Introduction
• Course Instructors
• Student Testimonials
• Course Outline
• Course Overview
• AICP Certification Maintenance
• Returning Student Discount
• Purchasing Information
• Log In To Planetizen Courses

Video Introduction

Course Instructors

John L. Renne, Ph.D., AICP is an Assistant Professor of transportation studies and urban planning and Associate Director of the University of New Orleans Transportation Center. He has worked with state and local government on TOD issues in Colorado, New Jersey, and Western Australia. He has published articles in Transportation Quarterly, World Transport Policy & Practice, Transportation, the Journal of Urban Health, the Journal of Public Transportation, Urban Design International , and Planning. Dr. Renne has spoken about TOD across the United States, Belgium, Italy, Australia, and New Zealand.

Before joining the University of New Orleans, he worked as a one-year Visiting Research Associate for the Planning and Transport Research Centre at Murdoch University in Western Australia, where he provided TOD research and advice to the State of Western Australia's Department for Planning and Infrastructure. He organized Australia's first national conference on TOD, held July 5-8, 2005. From 2001 - 2004, Dr. Renne worked as a Project Manager for the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers where he led TOD projects along with Research Professor Jan Wells on evaluating the New Jersey Transit Village Initiative and Developing a Tool to Measure the Success of TODs for the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies (published as NCHRP Research Results Digest 294). Professor Renne is a USDOT Eisenhower Transportation Fellow and Eno Transportation Foundation Fellow.

Shelley Poticha is President and CEO of Reconnecting America, a national non-profit organization working to integrate transportation systems and the communities they serve, with the goals of generating lasting public and private returns, improving economic and environmental efficiency, and giving consumers greater choice. Reconnecting America has two major projects: The Center for Transit-Oriented Development (CTOD) which assists developers, transit agencies, communities and investors to use transit investments to spur a new wave of development that improves housing affordability and choice, revitalizes downtowns and urban and suburban neighborhoods, and creates lasting value and high quality urbanism; and Reconnecting America’s Transportation Networks (RATN) which is working to redefine national policies for intercity travel in order to integrate our separately functioning aviation, passenger rail and intercity bus systems into a more convenient, secure, financially viable and sustainable network.

Prior to this position, she was the Executive Director of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU). During her tenure, Ms. Poticha guided CNU's growth into a nationwide coalition with a prominent voice in national debates on urban revitalization, growth policy, and sprawl. She has authored several books, including The New Transit Town: Best Practices in Transit-Oriented Development, Charter of the New Urbanism, a CNU publication, and The Next American Metropolis, with Peter Calthorpe. She holds a Master of City Planning degree from the University of California at Berkeley and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Jeffrey S. Wood is a Program Associate/GIS Specialist at Reconnecting America. His work includes mapping and analyzing TOD communities and promoting market-based solutions for funding transit alternatives. Previously, he co-founded an umbrella organization for local non-profits in Austin, Texas, that sought to promote streetcars as an alternative transportation choice. Mr. Wood has a Master's degree in Community and Regional Planning and a Bachelor's degree in Geography from the University of Texas at Austin.

Student Testimonials

"Overall, I have found the course and resource very helpful and hope to continue dialogue and information sharing with your team in the future."
--Stephen A. Gazillo, AICP (Newington, CT)

"I want to thank you for the materials. I learned a lot and appreciate all that went into putting this material together."
--Susan Johnston, AICP (Las Vegas, NV)

"Thanks for a great opportunity to learn about a field that I hope to enter."
--John Gahbauer (San Mateo, CA)

"Good, well-rounded, informative course valuable to planners--especially those with minimal transportation planning experience."
--Amy Augustine, AICP - Augustine Planning Associates, Inc.

Course Outline

• Lesson 1: History of Cities
• Lesson 2: Post WWII Auto-Dependence
• Lesson 3: What is Smart Growth?
• Lesson 4: What is Sustainable Development?
• Lesson 5: What is Transit-Oriented Development?
• Topic 1 Quiz

• Lesson 1: What is New Urbanism?
• Lesson 2: One Size Does Not Fit All
• Lesson 3: Fitting the TOD to Transit Technology
• Lesson 4: Creating Quality Streets
• Lesson 5: Community Engagement in the Design Process
• Topic 2 Quiz

• Lesson 1: The Problems with Euclidian Zoning
• Lesson 2: Performance-based Zoning
• Lesson 3: Form-based Zoning
• Lesson 4: The High Cost of Free Parking
• Lesson 5: Innovative Parking Solutions
• Topic 3 Quiz

• Lesson 1: Role of the Federal Government
• Lesson 2: Role of State Government
• Lesson 3: Role of MPO and County Government
• Lesson 4: Role of Local Government
• Lesson 5: Role of Transit Agencies
• Topic 4 Quiz

• Lesson 1: Value Capture
• Lesson 2: Understanding Joint Development
• Lesson 3: Role of the Developer
• Lesson 4: Community Development Groups
• Lesson 5: Advocacy Groups
• Topic 5 Quiz

• Lesson 1: Understanding Institutional Finance
• Lesson 2: Understanding a Pro-Forma and Cash Flow
• Lesson 3: The Real Estate Development Process
• Lesson 4: The Difference between the Public and Private Sector
• Lesson 5: The Importance of Patient Equity
• Topic 6 Quiz

Course Overview

Transit-oriented development (TOD) has gained popularity as a strategy to address a number of urban problems, including traffic congestion, affordable housing shortages, air pollution, and sprawl. The Transit Oriented Development Toolbox will be useful to planners, developers, architects, policy makers, students, and advocates looking to learn more about this often-invoked subject.

The course will have six Topics with four to five Lessons each and a user-friendly online discussion forum. Each Topic will be geared towards a certain aspect of TOD and the Lessons will supply a deeper understanding of the subject matter. The forums will be a place to network and discuss the issues associated with each Topic with the instructors and students.

The first Topic, Smart Growth and Sustainable Development, will take students through the history of cities and provide the definitions of smart growth, sprawl and TOD. Each Lesson is geared towards creating an understanding of the context for TOD and why it has become such an important tool for the 21st century.

The second Topic, The Importance of Urban Design in TOD, will cover the urban design issues associated with TOD. The Lessons in this Topic cover the considerations designers and transit agencies must make in order to create good place-based TOD. The third Topic covers the issues of land use and parking. Often in today’s cities, uses are zoned separately making TOD illegal. These lessons will break down what options there are for reducing parking requirements and will help to determine which codes are right to make TOD legal again.

The fourth Topic covers the government's role in TOD. Often policy changes are needed to encourage TOD and foster an atmosphere that will allow developers, transit authorities and cities to work together to create vibrant places and boost transit ridership. The fifth Topic covers the inherent value in TOD. Lessons cover strategies for capturing value from TOD, doing joint development and looking at the roles of community groups and developers. There are many players on the TOD stage; each has a role and the public sector plays an important one.

Finally, the sixth Topic covers financing TOD. Often developers and transit agencies do not understand each other's language. These lessons will help to break down the barriers and allow practitioners to get a basic feel for what is happening on the developer's side.

This course is a basic primer on what TOD is and is not. It will allow professionals to learn the basics of many aspects of TOD, and will also push students to ask more pointed questions in the forums. The forums give students the unique opportunity to ask specific questions about specific situations and receive specific answers directly from course instructors.

As one of the Lessons states, one size TOD does not fit all. Each station area has specific issues and details that need to be addressed. Our hope is that this course will answer the questions that professionals might have about Transit-Oriented Development and inform the process of creating great places.

AICP Certification Maintenance

This course has been approved to provide 4 credits for the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) Certification Maintenance program.

To claim your CM credits, review the Guide to Claiming AICP CM Credits for Planetizen Courses.

Returning Student Discount

Returning Planetizen Courses students can also take advantage of a 15% discount off the price of another Planetizen Course (PLAN-145, PLAN-310, PLAN-315, and all webinars exempted). To receive this discount, contact us at info@planetizen.com.

Purchasing Information

To purchase this course, please add it to your shopping cart. Please note that you must be a registered Planetizen user to purchase this course. If you are not a registered user, please take a few seconds and register for free.