Online Opportunities for TOD Learning

Looking to update your knowledge base? Consider viewing a webinar or two. Below you’ll find webinars, presentations, and other opportunities to gain insight on hot topics related to transit friendly planning and transit-oriented development.

Active Transportation

The Safe Routes Partnership offers webinars and other resources designed to help communities promote and support walking, bicycling, and safe routes to transit for people of all ages and abilities.

While bus rapid transit (BRT) and high-priority bus transit projects can improve mobility, such improvements can also affect the safety of pedestrians and bicyclists. This TRB-hosted webinar explores the explores Capital Metro’s planning, designing, and constructing pedestrian and bicycle accommodations in high-priority/BRT transit corridors experience in Austin, TX.

Buses and BRT

This 2019 APA Planning Webcast discusses bus rapid transit (BRT) projects in Indianapolis, Richmond, VA, and Los Angeles, as well as related TOD projects in Los Angeles.

This 2023 video highlights BRT in the Twin Cities in Minnesota, Indianapolis, IN, and Milwaukee, WI. Speakers discuss successes and challenges in reaching stakeholders, including residents along proposed BRT corridors, local government partners, and state-level legislators.

Or consider spending 14 minutes with Enrique Peñalosa, the former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia. In this 2013 TED talk, he discussed how “an advanced city is not one where the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport.”

Complete Streets

The National Complete Streets Coalition (NCSC) hosts a monthly webinar series, featuring case studies and examples of best practices from communities nationwide and beyond. The Complete Streets 301 series focuses on putting policies into practice. As part of this series, the NCSC hosted Complete Streets Responses to COVID-19, a webinar led by Emiko Atherton, formerly director of the National Complete Streets Coalition, and featuring a panel of experts working on COVID-19 response.

Complete Streets 301. Putting People First

This webinar from Smart Growth America looks at the best Complete Streets Policies of 2023.

Also check out this video from the Eno Center for Transportation that looks at the Role and Future of Complete Streets Post COVID

Design Justice

How can Design Justice—a framework for analysis that examines how design (of images, objects, systems, etc.) influence the distribution of benefits and burdens between various groups of people—be used in the built environment? The webinar and presentation from the Design justice Network discusses the growing community of practice that focuses on the equitable distribution of design’s benefits and burden; meaningful participation in design decisions; and recognition of community-based, indigenous, & diasporic design traditions, knowledge, and practices.

Equitable TOD (eTOD)

Equitable transit oriented development (eTOD) seeks to create equitable development that supports healthy, opportunity-rich, transit friendly places. It supports strategies that ensure low-income residents and residents of color benefit from—and are not displaced by—new development and can include the preservation and expansion of affordable housing, tenant protections, improving connections to jobs and economic opportunities, and supporting small and local businesses.

Check out these offerings from the Center for Community Progress

Also great are these webinars from other eTOD partners

In early 2019, the Center for Transit-Oriented Development (CNT) recorded a five-part series on issues affecting equity and affordability in transit-friendly communities. Topics included affordable housing, parking, delivery of social service, new transportation technologies, and the impact of history and culture on eTOD.

Financing TOD

The TOD Office at Metro Transit (Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN) and Baker Tilly, a municipal financial advisory firm, host this 2000 webinar, Innovative Financing for TOD. Click here for the slides and presentation.

This 2022 APA PlanningWebcast provides an overview of financing opportunities available from USDOT, EPA and HUD and illustrates successful uses of this financing.

Also, the World Bank offers a series of self-paced modules designed to explore the basics of TOD corridor planning. This module introduces the topic of TOD financing and explores business models suitable for TOD investment.

Form Based Codes

University of Chicago Professor Emily Talen and Placemakers principal and codes researcher Hazel Borys discuss the use of form-based codes in America.

This webinar from 2017 from Smart Growth Network in partnership with the Form-Based Codes Institute explores how communities use form-based codes to create vibrant, walkable places.

The Form-Based Codes Institute also offers a number of webinars on the topic.

Planetizen, the planning news website, offers an online version of its one-day course on Form-Based Codes. FBC101: ABCs of Form-Based Codes features leading practitioners and innovators in the subject and is the first course in an eight-course track.

Health & Environment

Urban planning and public health share common missions and have an intertwined past. Each field grew out of efforts that began in the 19th century and continued into the 20th century and that aimed to improve the welfare of individuals, families, and communities by creating safe and convenient places. While urban planning and public health became distinct fields, each with its own methods and goals, the two disciplines have increasingly found alignment in purpose. Some of the ways the fields relate can be seen in efforts that support Active Transportation or Complete Streets (above). These webinars from the Eno Center for Transportation, the National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health (Canada), the Canadian Public Health Association, and resources explore the interrelationship of urban planning and public health in various other ways.

Joint Development

Simply put, joint development is when two or more parties to develop a piece of property. This quite often involves a private developer and a transit agency. FTA hosted this webinar and presentation that reviews changes to the agency’s Guidance on Joint Development Circular 7050.1B.

The advocacy organization Mpact (formerly known as Rail~Volution) presented The Transit Agency’s Guide to Joint Development, in which planning professionals discussed the Transportation Research Board’s TCRP Research Report 224: Guide to Joint Development for Public Transportation Agencies (2021).

Also see Joint Development: Partnering to Build Complete Communities Near Transit, a brief review of FTA-assisted joint development projects and their benefits.

Land Banking

Land Banking is the practice of aggregating parcels of land for future development or sales. The Center for Community Progress (CCP) explores the basics of land banking in its 101 webinars.

Check out this webinar offered by the Housing & Community Development Network of New Jersey, in partnership with the CCP.

Or this webinar offered by the National Association of Realtors, which explores how land banking can be used to address vacant and abandoned property.

Open and Shared Streets

Related to Complete Streets, open and shared streets reclaim space once dominated by cars and other motor vehicles for use by pedestrians, bicyclists, and people of all ages and abilities. Important during the pandemic period, and still embraced by many communities, open and shared streets expand the outdoor space available and enhance safety of those who use and travel through these spaces.

Toole Design offers this Rebalancing Streets for People webinar (2020; Facebook sign-in required).

The Transportation Research and Education Center at Portland State University shares An Access Approach to Shared Streets (2018).

This webinar from the Access and Urban Design Committees of the Boston Society of Architects presents “Shared Streets, Healthy Spaces, An Initial Assessment” (2020).

This webinar looks at the use of maps and data to make streets interoperable, or usable for all users (2018).

America Walks offers this webinar on how cities and towns transitioned to open streets during the pandemic, and lessons for the pandemic world (2021).

Opportunity Zones

Smart Growth America offers one-hour webinars on Opportunity Zones (2018).

Prosperity Now, together with the Asset Building Policy Network, PolicyLink, and others discuss the mechanics of Opportunity Zones, and explore the promise and challenges presented by the program (2019).

In 2022, HUD provided this webinar that covers the basics of using HOME Investment Partnerships Program (HOME) funds within Opportunity Zones (OZs), and recommends the webinar be used in conjunction with the Using HOME and HTF Funds within Opportunity Zones Guidebook.

The State of New Jersey has 169 census tracts designated as Opportunity Zones, spread across 75 municipalities, or 42 percent of eligible towns. Learn more about Opportunity Zones and how they apply to transit friendly development in New Jersey.

Parking

Often under-priced and over-supplied, parking has long hindered the efficient use of valuable urban space.

Planetizen’s Parking Reform course examines the challenges presented by most parking regulations currently in use and explores reforms such as processing change, parking management tools, and strategies for engaging political and other stakeholders.

Also check out our 2023 People, Parking, and Planning event, where we explored the challenges associated with current parking standards, ongoing legislative developments, and creative strategies to use existing under-utilized parking spaces.

This 2022 webinar provides a deep dive into implementing and operating an on-street parking pricing program, framed by ITDP’s On Street Parking Pricing guide.

This 2019 webinar, The Impacts of Parking Reform in the Twin Cities, from the Metropolitan Council explores the relationship between parking and TOD efforts.

In this 2019 webinar from the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT), Peter Haas demonstrates how CNT’s eTOD tool calculates the effects of parking near TOD areas and elsewhere and Lindsay Bayley discusses how parking policy reforms, particularly minimum parking requirements, can help infrastructure work more efficiently.

Another resource is this one hour webinar by Smart Growth America and the University of Utah on Empty Spaces, a 2017 study that looked at parking needs in five TODs.

Placemaking

Simply put, placemaking is the process of creating quality places that people want to live, work, play and learn in. It frequently involves undertaking strategic efforts to achieve goals and may focus on creative (i.e., arts-based) and/or tactical (short-term and experimental) placemaking. Regardless of the methods, placemaking includes local stakeholder involvement.

Check out the event recap of Creating Places for People: Placemaking in Transit-Friendly Downtowns , which NJTOD hosted in collaboration with Downtown NJ.

The Center for Community Progress offers webinars that support its mission of building a future in which vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated properties no longer exist.

This Urban Land Institute (ULI) webinar explores the connection between arts and real estate and highlights projects in Washington, DC, Memphis, TN, and San Antonio, TX.

PlacemakingUS, a national network working to build living, interconnected places, offers a large number of webinars for free and for a fee.

Also, check out the free and paid webinars and trainings offered by the Project for Public Spaces.

Transportation Demand Management (TDM)

TDM is set of strategies designed to improve air quality and maximize traveler choice by offering a variety of multi-modal transportation options.

Mobility Labs (ML) offers a wealth of information on understanding how people make their transportation decision, and how planners, employers, developers, and others can help people use transit, ridesharing, walking, biking, and telework to meet their transportation needs.

The City of Boulder, Colorado, webinar panel discusses on how TDM, Parking, and Access Management have been utilized to improve conditions in the East Arapahoe Corridor.

Another resource is the Association of Commuter Transportation, which has made a number of webinars available.

TOD Corridors

TOD Corridor planning focuses on the potential to build transit friendly regions that provide greater benefit than the sum of individual TOD locations.

This session from the 2023 Valley Vision Livability Summit discusses the built environment of transportation corridors and the role it plays in regional and smart growth planning.

This 2016 Smart Growth Online webinar series examines the development of transit-oriented districts or corridors.

The Los Angeles City Planning Department discusses its efforts to plan the Slauson Corridor Transit Neighborhood Plan (2020).

This 2018 APA Planning Webcast sponsored by APA-Wisconsin looks at Transportation Corridor Planning for Improved Land Use Outcomes and focuses on the efforts of City of La Crosse.

And check out this article from 2013 about the “Inner M&E” Strategic Corridor Plan.

Vacant Land

Vacant land can be seen as an opportunity, or a challenge plaguing communities.

Two offerings from the Center for Community Progress, the first looks at ways to reverse the impacts of vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated (VAD) properties through code enforcement, and the second discusses greening and vacant land revitalization.

The Center for Creative Land Recycling and EPA R9’s Office of Brownfields discuss land renewal as an approach to maximize a community’s assets to invest in local needs ranging from economic development to affordable housing to parks and commercial services. Slides for each webinar can be found here.

Value Capture

As transportation networks and urban land values are closely linked, any improvement to these networks increase accessibility and the desirability and value of surrounding areas. This increase land value typically benefits land owners and developers. Value capture techniques seek to redirect a portion of the increased value towards the cost of the improvements, its maintenance, and/or future transportation investment.

Since 2019, FHWA has hosted an ongoing series of Value Capture Strategies webinars. The webinar series details the Value Capture techniques promoted in the Federal Highway Administration’s Every Day Counts (EDC) initiative.

Or check out this 2022 Mpact webinar, Federal Tools to Advance TOD.

Updated January 23, 2024