Michael Kodransky and David Fields presented on TOD and parking policy, highlighting the amount of space dedicated to parking in cities around the world, and outlining global best practice examples of parking policy and management. Michael Kodransky compared a development proposal in Zurich, which dedicates 18% of its total area to parking and offer 600 bicycle parking spots, to a proposal for a new development in Rio’s Barra da Tijuca area, which proposes giving 68% of the development’s area to parking spaces and provides no bike parking. Kodransky went on to use this example to explain how parking supply can influence the difference in anticipated mode share and traffic patterns.

Oren Tatcher and Daniel Hernandez (Jonathan Rose Companies, NY) shared a panel on Public-Private Partnerships (PPP), focusing the benefit of such partnerships for urban development and public transportation. The moderator of the panel, Deputy Secretary of Urban Development Domingos Dias, noted that it is important for Brazil to learn more about PPPs and use them to enable more large projects of public interest.

Other panel themes were BRT planning and the FIFA World Cup; Bogotá’s experience with pedestrian, cycle, and public transportation infrastructure improvements; and designing cities for the human scale, all of which generated vigorous discussions with the audience, which was made up mainly of real estate industry executives from around the state of São Paulo.

“The Urban Forum this year was a success, and much of the merit of it is due to ITDP, which identified international speakers of the highest level of knowledge related to urban mobility and invited them to attend” said Secovi-SP’s Director of Sustainability, Hamilton Leite.  As a way to further spread the rich content presented in the panel discussions, Secovi-SP has made videos of the lectures available atwww.convencaosecovi.com.br