REGIONAL TOOLS & CONVENINGS

• Property Acquisition Strategy: The Center for Transit-Oriented Development (CTOD) and community foundations in the Great Communities Collaborative are partnering with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission to establish a $40 million fund to support acquisition and assembly of parcels near quality transportation for affordable housing to ensure that people of diverse incomes are better connected to regional opportunities. For more details, see recent news and a report from CTOD that lays out the need and opportunity for the strategy.
  
• Great Communities Toolkit:  This downloadable toolkit helps community groups shape transit-oriented development opportunities, ensuring affordable homes, local shops, access to job centers and improved community services.
  

Transit-Oriented for All: The Case for Mixed-Income Transit-Oriented Communities in the Bay Area: This Great Communities report assesses the region’s potential for income-diverse communities around transit stations and outlines implementation tools. The paper is intended to spur dialog, enrich policy debates, and advance the practice of mixed-income transit-oriented development. Downloadable copies of the report can be found on UC Berkeley's Center for Community Innovation website. July 2007

• Health Impact Assessment: A Toolkit for Community Based Planning: Developed by Human Impact Partners for the Great Communities Collaborative, this toolkit is designed to help local communities do a health impact assessment in their own neighborhoods. To read more and download the toolkit, please visit Human Impact Partner's website. November 2007
• Building Support for Transit for Transit-Oriented Development: Do Community-Engagement Toolkits Work? The Center for Community Innovation developed this report using Great Communities sites as case studies. Download the report from CCI's website. August 2009
  
• Mixed-Income Housing Action Guide: Created by the Center for Transit-Oriented Development for the Great Communities Collaborative, this action guide was designed as a tool to help community advocates, practioners, intermediaries, and jurisdictions in their efforts to foster mixed-income TOD. Download the guide. 
• TOD MarketPlace: The Urban Land Institute hosts an annual symposium bringing together developers, city officials, and other key stakeholders in transit-oriented development to discuss trends and to critique recent city plans. Download the report from the 2009 TOD MarketPlace.
  

TOOLS FOR SITE PLANNING

• Communications Site Assistance: Greenbelt Alliance helps site leads develop a strategic communications plan for each site. They also provide ongoing assistance with media communications, such as interviews, letters to the editor, and articles.
  
• Community Health Site Assistance: Human Impact Partners, Public Health Law Policy, and other health partners provide the Collaborative with a range of site assistance to ensure community health is addressed in the city's plans. These tools include community health surveys, analysis of county health department data, and assessment of draft plans.
  
• Geographic Information Systems: GreenInfo Network provides larte-format satellite maps for all the Collaborative sites to help community members visualize the planning area.
• Leadership Institute: Urban Habitat assists site and local leaders to conduct trainings for community members on topics ranging from density to community benefits in transit-oriented development.
  
• Mixed Income Housing Site Assistance: The Center for Community Innovation at UC Berkeley and Nonprofit Housing Association of Northern California provide technical assistance on how to ensure city plans include homes affordable to people of all incomes. These tools include housing needs assessments, identification of opportunity sites for affordable housing, and assessment of draft plans.
• Site Outings: Greenbelt Alliance coordinates tours at individual sites to educate community members and public officials on best practices in building walkable communities near transit. These tours include visits to developments and presentations by developers, city officials, and others on various topics related to transit-oriented development.
• Traffic/Parking Analysis: TransForm conducts traffic and parking analyses to support site and local leaders' efforts to ensure city plans tailor parking and other requirements appropriately. This analysis uses the air district-approved URBEMIS trip generation model and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission's parking model.
• Site-Specific Reports: Collaborative partners are commissioning reports in several of our active sites on particularly relevant issues for the site. Some of the reports are:
• A Housing Needs Assessment for Pittsburg, California. Released in December 2007, this report by the Center for Community Innovation provides a snapshot of the housing situation in Pittsburg, CA. It looks at such issues as number of families facing a housing burden, RHNA allocations, and overcrowding. Download the report.
  

• Creating a Regional Model of Mixed-Income, Transit-Oriented Development in Downtown San Leandro: Opportunities, Challenges, and Tools. This report by Strategic Economics analyzes the impact the San Leandro's Station Area Plan, centered in downtown around the future Bus Rapid transit stop and inclusive of the San Leandro BART station, will have on housing choice and resident displacement.  This paper explores how housing choice within the Station Area Plan relates to the City's goals of increasing transit ridership, boosting downtown retail, and creating a vibrant, walkable community. It also presents specific strategies and policies for achieving very low-income housing production and preservation in the context of a downtown housing market with great potential for appreciation. Download the report.

BAY AREA AND NATIONAL RESOURCES

• The Transit Oriented Development (TOD) Resource Guide - a full listing of links to online resources and reports describing national and regional efforts to address TOD issues and opportunities.

• Bay Area and National Resources Directory - lists groups and agencies involved in transit oriented development here in the San Francisco Bay Area as well as other parts of the United States.
• Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Communities has a short video on creating healthy, affordable communities near transit, entitled "Building Communities We Care About." Watch the video.
• The Urban Land Institute's Bay Area chapter has a free, comprehensive online compilation of Bay Area maps and land use information. The website lists map information by county and by topic. Check it out at www.urbanmap.org.