Transit-Oriented Development in China

Abstract

In recent years most of the Chinese cities have shown a rapid decline in modal split of public transport as a consequence of rapid urbanization and motorization in the “socialist market economy”. It has been witnessed that cars flood into streets; road congestion, air pollution and traffic safety have become major problems in urban China. To ameliorate this situation and to promote sustainable urban traffic, many Chinese metropolises consider the concept of Transit-Oriented Development (TOD), which is a model with worldwide successful experience in promoting public transport through integrating urban traffic with land use and creating a mobility environment where public transport is a much more respectable alternative to automobile travel. However, as the municipal governments embrace the concept, they were not aware of the fact that the realization of TOD requires fulfilling a number of preconditions, including a high level of land use diversity and density, beautiful urban design and cityscape, constraints on automobile use, good transit service qualities, good urban governance, and a real estate market that provides affordable and mixed types of housing. Even if the governments are informed of these conditions and seriously intend to meet these conditions, they are bound to deliberately enact comprehensive targeted policies and to mobilize substantial resources and support. However, after decades of economic reforms the Chinese cities have grown from comparatively simple systems that heavily depend on artificial intervention to complex and self-organizing systems that seem to be unplannable. In other words, it is very likely nowadays for the deliberate design for TOD to become dashed in complex cities. Therefore, rather than focusing on providing policy instruments and implementation recommendations of TOD for the Chinese local governments, this study sought to understand how cities are structured, what makes cities work, how to perceive cities as complex systems, and with such a perception how to plan cities (with respect to TOD). Accordingly, this book aims to pry open the complex urban systems firstly by formulating a conceptual model of cities and establishing 36 city parameters; and secondly by applying this framework into the case area, the Dalian city that is one of the most prosperous cities located in the eastern coastal region of China and has officially adopted TOD, whereby the empirical scores of the parameters are obtained. Based on the empirical scores, we draw lessons as to how the city parameters operate, how complex urban systems self-organize, and then what the implications are for deliberate design. The purpose of the lessons is to show elite politicians, policy analysts, public officials, legalists and also the wider public how TOD can be planned in contemporary cities in China.