First Presentation

I think I mentioned previously that I was asked to put together a presentation on TOD (For all my non-planners: that's transit oriented development). Well, I gave the presentation today, and it went pretty well, though it was incredibly hard to put the presentation together. Of course, the language hurdle is enough to think about, but I also was given very little direction (other than "TOD please") and didn't feel like I knew my audience at all. How much did they already know? They seem to be mostly designers -- will I insult them if I talk about basic TOD design concepts? (Which as a non-designer, is about all I feel comfortable speaking about).


In the end I decided to focus on one case study of successful TOD in the U.S. (Arlington, VA), and that seemed to go pretty well. Most of the department came and one group stayed through the whole thing and had TONS of questions. Turns out they are currently creating a master plan/design for a new city on the periphery of Beijing (also along the new high speed train to Tianjin), and are very interested in station development, phasing, economic impacts, etc. I didn't have all the details they wanted, but at least I now know what they are interested in, and a little bit more about the projects they are working on.

All in all, I was happy with my presentation -- especially because it has given me some concrete things to work on, and it seemed to break the ice with some of my colleagues. Maybe now they won't ignore me as much!