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Reconnecting America CEO John Robert Smith will be visiting various cities in Montana to talk about the need for a small town and rural transportation policy. He will be meeting with local elected officials, community groups and planners. Smith will be in Billings on Sept. 21, Bozeman/Belgrade on Sept. 22, Helena on Sept. 23 and Missoula on Sept. 24. The Yellowstone Public Radio in Billings, Montana, offered this: Strategic investments in transportation by local governments can revitalize communities, says the former mayor of Meridian, Mississippi. John Robert Smith is now co-chair of the group Transportation For America. He will be in Montana this week to talk to officials and others about how he transformed a derelict portion of his downtown into a vibrant center for commerce, housing, and the arts. YPR is part of a multi-station public radio reporting project looking at the issue of transportation. Funding for the Transportation Nation project comes from the Rockefeller…

The nation's leading forum dedicated to advancing urbanism and promoting alternatives to sprawl was held in Denver this June and among the presentations at the Congress for New Urbanism's annual convention was a New Urbanism 202 seminar entitled "Implementation Strategies For Transit-Oriented Development."

Robin Kniech, Program Director of FRESC: Good Jobs, Strong Communities in Denver, Colorado, presents on Mass Transit, Transit Oriented Development, and the Opportunity for Community Benefits. The presentation was originally delivered at the February 2009 Good Jobs, Green Jobs Conference in Washington, D.C. A similar presentation focused more on tools and best practices related to affordable housing was delivered as part of a panel on Gentrification and Mixed Income Housing moderated by Reconnecting America at the October 2008 Railvolution Conference in San Francisco, and is available upon request. The presentation distinguishes the types of transit and TOD projects where equity and community benefits might be pursued, specific job benefits that can be captured, challenges, and case studies from the Denver experience.

Presentation to the Council of State Community Development Agencies Housing Training Conference. This session was part of the CSCDA training seminar for housing program managers on the issues of transit-oriented development and the role states can play in implementation. The panel included presenters from California and Massachusetts.

Reconnecting America's Technical Assistance Director Sam Zimbabwe addressed a Regional Transit-Oriented Development Summit in Pittsburgh Jan. 5. An audience of 170 government and transit officials, planners, private developers and community leaders attended. The event was organized by City of Pittsburgh Planning and Mayor's Office, East Liberty Development Inc., The Heinz Endowments, Surdna Foundation, Sustainable Pittsburgh, and the Pittsburgh Urban Redevelopment Authority. This presentation was the keynote presentation that kicked-off a discussion of the specific challenges and opportunities to implementing TOD in the Pittsburgh region.