Transit Oriented Development and its effects Exploring relationships between TOD, accessibility and labour productivity in Beijing, China

Many cities all over the world are facing similar problems, such as road congestion, air pollution, urban sprawl, and increasing scarcity of available urban land. Transit Oriented Development (TOD) is widely recognised as an urban planning strategy that can address these problems. TOD is often advocated as a generic, ubiquitously applicable concept that integrates urban transport and land use systems, by combining a high level of public transport connection with high-density, mixed-use, cycling- and pedestrian-friendly developments, centred around a transit station. There is already a significant body of knowledge on the concept and principles of TOD as well as the perceived effects to date. However, the specificities of the Chinese context (e.g., the scale and pace of the urbanisation and motorisation process as well as the institutional arrangements around land development and transport provision) demand a more context-specific elaboration of TOD and what it can and does achieve. This thesis evaluated and applied theories, concepts, and methods from urban planning, geography, transport studies, and spatial economics to analyse the case of TOD in Beijing, China. It evaluated the TOD characteristics of metro station areas in Beijing and developed a TOD typology for those areas. Furthermore, the thesis explored the relationship between TOD and the effects that TOD actually delivered. The effects analysed in this thesis included the accessibility to jobs and inhabitants in an area (as a primary/direct TOD effect), and the labour productivity of an area (as an example of a secondary/indirect TOD effect).