Assessing Physical Environment of TOD Communities around Metro Stations: Using Big Data and Machine Learning
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Type
Resources
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Includes:
Report
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Audience
Urban Planners
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Published
May 2020
Transit-oriented Development (TOD) is a planning strategy that aims to cluster jobs, housing, services, and amenities around public transport stations to promote urban development that is compact, mixed-use, pedestrianand bicycle-friendly, and closely integrated with mass transit1. Since the introduction of the concept of TOD to China in the early 2000s, this new development theory has attracted plenty of research attention and triggered broad discussions ranging from macro-level policy recommendations on urban planning and land uses to micro-level guidelines on facility layout and space design around public transit hubs. However, at the implementation level, a systematic monitoring and evaluation framework to track the impacts of adopting TOD principles on the quality of physical environment has to yet to be established.
The quality of the physical environment in TOD communities really matters because it largely determines transit access and experience for riders, therefore affecting their choice and frequency of transit use—a crucial factor that shapes the development of a TOD community. It might be true that considerable improvements in physical environment in TOD communities could lead to possible displacement of pre-existing residents from the area who are the originally intended beneficiaries. However, it could eventually result in wider adoptions of transit use, bringing increased convenience and vibrancy to the neighborhood.
