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Transit-Oriented Development for Climate Mitigation in Urban Centres

Discover how transit-oriented development can be used to tackle the climate crisis to create sustainable and healthier cities.

Hafen city apartments around transport and sitting area

Transit-Oriented Development for Climate Mitigation in Urban Centres

  • 5 weeks

  • 2 hours per week

  • Accreditation available

  • Digital certificate when eligible

  • Intermediate level

Find out more about how to join this course

The CPD Certification Service

This course has been certified by the CPD Certification Service as conforming to continuing professional development principles. Find out more.

Understand how city planners are using transit-oriented development

Transit-oriented development (TOD) helps to create sustainable and healthy communities, concentrating residential, business, and leisure spaces all within walking distance of public transport.

On this five-week course, you’ll learn how TOD can help with better land use planning, improve the performance of existing transport systems, and help residents choose more efficient and healthier modes of transport.

This knowledge will help you discover how TOD can help fight climate change with sustainable transport and influence human behaviour for low-carbon mobility.

Delve into climate change mitigation and the Glasgow and Paris Agreement

You’ll unpack the travel demands in urban areas as you start to explore carbon reduction strategies to meet the targets set out in the Glasgow and Paris COP events.

Discovering that electric vehicles aren’t enough, you’ll learn how cities must reduce car dependency. With this knowledge, you’ll understand how TOD can aid a mode shift in people’s transport choices.

Learn how to make transit-oriented development a success

As you unpack your own location’s transit-orientation, you’ll start to explore TOD policies in practice to gain a practical understanding.

You’ll learn strategies for designing for density, creating healthy and liveable cities, and the different accessibility measures to understand how to make TOD a success.

Look to the future of TOD with the experts from RMIT University

Through case studies and interactive exercises, you’ll explore strategic urban development and how TOD can help shape future transport and cities.

You’ll be guided by the specialists at RMIT University to ensure you finish the course with the knowledge of how TOD can help mitigate climate change.

Skip to 0 minutes and 4 seconds In many cities around the world, automobiles make up the majority of urban travel. And we need to reduce the burden that they place on our climate. I’m Jago Dodson. I’m a professor of urban policy at RMIT University. My name is Jan Scheurer. I’m honorary associate professor at RMIT University, partly based at RMIT Europe in Barcelona. Our course is about transport and land use integration. And that has been a theme that’s been going on for a long time. Now imagine 150 years back. Most of our movement in cities was on foot and maybe on animals. We did not have any mechanised transport. We did not have any motorised transport.

Skip to 0 minutes and 41 seconds But at the time, here in Barcelona, there was a planner called Ildefons Cerda who actually was one of the first to come up with ideas of integrating the railways, which was then the brand-new technology, into urban planning. And you can see it now. It is very much a mix of all sorts of modes of transport. There’s pedestrians. There’s cyclists. There’s a tram. And we’re going to talk a lot about public transport and how it anchors urban development. We need to understand how to integrate transport networks with urban development and how to support more livable communities, more mixed-use communities that incorporate active travel into daily life connected to transport systems.

Skip to 1 minute and 19 seconds In this course, we’ll look at the challenge of climate change and urban mobility through the lens of transit-orientated development. We’ll learn what is transit-orientated development, how can we bring that about in cities, how to provide good-quality public transport networks, and how to design land use that can support them. And then we’ll look at some of the bigger challenges around governing transit-orientated development, how to bring all the actors in a city together to help solve these problems, looking at how we can evolve our cities to be much more transit-orientated and to support walking and cycling. So thank you very much for taking this course. And I hope you will enjoy the next five weeks.

Syllabus

  • Week 1

    Climate change and mobility

    • Climate policy and transport

      Meet the teaching team and discover who you’ll be learning with as we start exploring why addressing urban and transit planning is so important.

    • Electric vehicles to the rescue?

      Explore whether electric vehicles make a difference in terms of transport sustainability and achieving climate change targets.

    • Changing transport, changing cities

      Investigate how TOD is transforming urban development before being introduced to your case study.

    • Weekly wrap

      Reflect on the key ideas covered in Week 1 and find out what's on for next week.

  • Week 2

    What is TOD?

    • How do cities integrate transit options?

      Find out what's on for Week 2 as we begin our exploration of the ways cities integrate transit options.

    • The healthy city dimension

      Explore how TOD can enhance public health through reducing sedentary lifestyles and encouraging active travel.

    • TOD in urban planning

      Explore the origins and history of TOD in different parts of the world.

    • Weekly wrap

      Reflect on the key ideas covered in Week 2 and find out what's on for next week.

  • Week 3

    Transit accessibility and infrastructure

    • Mobility and accessibility: what's the difference?

      Find out what's on for Week 3 as we explore how our thinking about the context of land use and transport is changing.

    • How public transport enables TOD

      Investigate the different modes and hierarchies of public transport and how they facilitate TOD.

    • Network thinking: Accessibility measures for assessing TOD potential

      Discover how we can measure the usefulness of TOD options in urban planning and design.

    • Weekly wrap

      Reflect on the key ideas covered in Week 3 and find out what's on for next week.

  • Week 4

    TOD and the future of cities

    • Strategic urban development

      Find out what's on for Week 4 as we begin exploring the node-place model method for TOD evaluation and classification.

    • Transforming cities with TOD

      Explore examples to help us achieve the best balance of TOD in urban planning and design.

    • Weekly wrap

      Reflect on the key ideas covered in Week 4 and find out what's on for next week

  • Week 5

    TOD and future transport

    • TOD and the tamed motor vehicle

      Find out what's on for Week 5 as we explore the role of regulations and policies in calming and reducing the impact of motor vehicles.

    • TOD, shared and micro mobility

      Investigate the role of micro mobility in the future of urban transit development.

    • Enabling TOD

      Discover some of the regulatory and land use factors that need to be considered when implementing TOD.

    • It’s a wrap

      Reflect on what you've learned in this course and how you will integrate this into your professional practice.

Who is this accredited by?

The CPD Certification Service
The CPD Certification Service:

The CPD Certification Service was established in 1996 and is the leading independent CPD accreditation institution operating across industry sectors to complement the CPD policies of professional and academic bodies.

When would you like to start?

Start straight away and join a global classroom of learners. If the course hasn’t started yet you’ll see the future date listed below.

  • Available now

Learning on this course

On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

  • identify how public transport anchors urban development
  • interpret how public transport and surrounding buildings can be made to work together
  • assess the theory and practice of TOD
  • investigate how TOD can help us in meeting climate change goals.

Who is the course for?

This course is designed for professionals working in, or interested in, sustainable urban development. It will be particularly useful for city decision-makers and officials.

Who will you learn with?

Honorary Associate Professor at RMIT University and lead educator of this course. Jan researches how to improve transport networks and urban spaces to enable more sustainable mobility in cities.

Romaine Logere is one of the lead content writers at FutureLearn for RMIT Europe. She has a masters in design and did her PhD on transdisciplinary practice, both with RMIT University in Melbourne.

Who developed the course?

RMIT University

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) is a global university, with over 80,000 students, specialising in technology, design and enterprise.

  • Established

    1887
  • Location

    Melbourne, Australia
  • World ranking

    Top 210Source: QS World University Rankings 2022

EIT Urban Mobility

EIT Urban Mobility is an initiative of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). Since January 2019 we have been working to encourage positive changes in the way people move around cities in order to make them more liveable places. We aim to become the largest European initiative transforming urban mobility. Co-funding of up to € 400 million (2020-2026) from the EIT, a body of the European Union, will help make this happen.

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Ways to learn

Choose the best way to learn for you!

Subscribe & save

$39.99

For your first month. Automatically renews

Develop skills to further your career

  • Access to this course
  • Access to 1,000+ courses
  • Learn at your own pace
  • Discuss your learning in comments
  • Digital certificate when you're eligible

Cancel for free anytime

Buy this course

$79/one-off payment

Fulfill your current learning need

  • Access to this course
  • Learn at your own pace
  • Discuss your learning in comments
  • Printed and digital certificate when you’re eligible

Limited access

Free

Sample the course materials

  • Access expires 18 Jan 2025

Find out more about certificates, Unlimited or buying a course (Upgrades)

Sale price available until 29 December 2024 at 23:59 (UTC). T&Cs apply.

Find out more about certificates, Unlimited or buying a course (Upgrades)

Sale price available until 29 December 2024 at 23:59 (UTC). T&Cs apply.

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