Transit-oriented street design in Beijing

Access and Forms of Urbanity in Public Space: Transit Urban Design Beyond the Global North

“…With different people exercising control over the same space, contest and conflict among individuals and groups seem unavoidable. While the attainment of a certain degree of urbanity within station areas has been noted in the literature [17,46,47], there has been less scholarly focus on the empirical investigation of forms of urbanity emerging within public spaces around transit nodes. To bridge this gap, one of our particular interests in this paper lies in exploring existing forms of urbanity, particularly in relation to the questions of access, use and action within station areas.…”

“…Developing such an understanding and specifying capacities for transformational change have also been identified as crucial in many cities beyond the West, particularly Asian cities [13][14][15]. There are limited empirical investigations in cities of the global South, which struggle with the challenges of coordinating rapid transit networks and walkable neighbourhoods [16][17][18][19][20][21]. The gap between mobilities and designing places around new and existing transport infrastructure in the global South has been further outlined in a recent study as well [22].…”

“…While these studies at urban design scale offer valuable insights on future TOD projects, emphasizing social, formal and functional diversities in the design process, their applicability beyond cities of the global North lacks empirical investigation. The mobility challenges in the rapidly urbanising cities are different from those in Western cities, and so are the challenges to integrating urban design issues and transport networks [17]. This is in part due to the issues of political economy, urban informality (e.g., street trading and informal transport within station areas) and socio-cultural contexts [17,25].…”

“…The mobility challenges in the rapidly urbanising cities are different from those in Western cities, and so are the challenges to integrating urban design issues and transport networks [17]. This is in part due to the issues of political economy, urban informality (e.g., street trading and informal transport within station areas) and socio-cultural contexts [17,25]. As argued by Ewing and Cervero [26], the 5 Ds-density (a measure of interest variable per areal unit), design (street network features in a given area), distance to transit (a measure of the average shortest walkable route from the living spaces or workplaces to the nearest station), destination accessibility (a measure of the ease of pedestrian access from any given location over a given time span) and diversity (a measure of different functions and the extent to which they occur equally in a certain territory)-have gained popularity over the past decade for investigating the ways in which built environment can have impacts on travel behaviour, especially in cities in the US.…”

Is transit-oriented development (TOD) an internationally transferable policy concept?

“…International theories and policy lessons: neo-traditional prototype The main aesthetic principles and best practices set forth in the international literature on TOD are summarized in Table 3. The principles are grouped into 12 dimensions clustered in three key topics: place-making, facilities/logistics and process; a similar model has been used by Jacobson and Forsyth (2008) and Kong and Pojani (2017). For the most part, these principles embody many of the same design elements found in neo-traditional and new urbanist movements, such as moderately high densities, interconnected street patterns, mixed land uses, convenient and safe walkways, varied housing products, civic squares, and priority for non-motorized transport.…”