Disintegration of metro and land development in transition China: A dynamic analysis in Beijing

Abstract

The spatial disintegration of transit systems and land development is a vital challenge to the effectiveness of transit-oriented development policies. While transit land use integration and disintegration has received much research interest, conclusions remain mixed. This paper aims to clarify this area, using the large city of Beijing, China, as a case study. It evaluates whether and how Beijing's land and metro developments have disintegrated according to the basic principles of the Alonso-Muth-Mills model. A before-and-after approach is applied during a period of rapid transit development: 2008-2015. The results show that metro development, generally, was not clearly integrated with land use. Although newly transferred land parcels were geographically concentrated around metro stations, land use types and the degree of land intensification were unrelated to metro development; rather, the road system had a greater influence on these aspects. In addition, metro development led to more fragmented land use in the core areas (< 1.5 km) of metro stations than in the fringe areas (1.5-3 km away). This situation was mainly caused by institutional barriers to land-metro integration, such as revenue-oriented land development, the remaining centrally planned system of infrastructure investment, improper urban planning, and the fragmentation of development management that has occurred following China's political decentralization and marketization. Improving the integration of transit and land development will be difficult unless further reforms and institutional capacity-building are achieved.