Transit Oriented Development: From Design to Decision

Created for urban planners, designers, development professionals and public officials, this one-day workshop is a collaborative and engaging event designed to provide reality-tested, practical advice on how to plan, design and implement successful and context-specific Transit Oriented Development schemes.

The Province of British Columbia’s new policies (Bill 47) around transit-oriented areas provides a framework through which this workshop will set the implementation considerations that successful projects need to consider.

The workshop offers a platform where you can discuss the integration of land use and transportation planning, emphasizing the importance of pedestrian-friendly design, mixed-use development and efficient transit connectivity. Through interactive sessions, case studies and expert in-depth presentations with local and international examples, you will gain insights into the economic, environmental and social benefits of TOD. The hands-on format will foster a dynamic exchange of ideas, encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration and empower you to contribute to the development of transit-oriented communities that enhance urban living while reducing reliance on automobiles.

Note: This intermediate-level workshop requires a familiarity with basic planning and development terminologies. Please bring a laptop to participate in the workshop exercises.

1. Identifying what is Transit Oriented Development (TOD), its drivers, principles, evolutionand key components.
2. Recognizing the extent, opportunities and limits of the recent Province of BC legislation to produce feasible, viable and supportable TODs with built and conceptual local and international examples.
3. Assessing the success criteria and common pitfalls in the planning and implementation of TOD.
4. Capturing actionable input for TODs through participating in public and stakeholder engagement exercises and simulations.
5. Demonstrating how data from various sources can be leveraged to support fact-based TOD decision-making.

Oliver Hartleben is an architectural graduate and city planner with a public administration degree focused on evolving policy, urban design, built form, mobility, public outreach and innovation topics. Oliver has worked for over 20 years in the urban planning and transportation sectors, is working on several interdisciplinary project projects in the U.S. and Canada, and has a long track record of urban master planning, strategic planning, TOD and in-person and virtual stakeholder outreach projects. He is presently leading the Coquitlam Central TOD project for TransLink.

Oliver has conducted research on urban design, mobility and housing topics and has taught at different public and private universities. For the last five years, he has been teaching the “Designing Design Guidelines” course at SFU’s City Program, and currently leads Arcadis’s (formerly IBI Group) urban planning and urban design practice for Western Canada.

Gary Andrishak is a Vancouver-based principal at Arcadis (formerly IBI Group), who has led the firm’s North American Transit Oriented Development (TOD) practice in support of livable communities that are compact, dense, mixed-use, walkable, engaging, equitable and resilient. He is equally at home in the co-joined disciplines of land use and transit planning, and understands that implementation strategies, as much as TOD design and policy, represent the major challenge to promoting a transit friendly, vehicle-light lifestyle in our cities today.

During his more than 35 years in the field, and starting with a collaborative project in Minneapolis with Peter Calthorpe in the 1990s, Gary has led dozens of TOD plans across North America, where he has seen the evolution of the field and crystalized success factors for their implementation.

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