Does government favor high end housing development around a representative TOD project

Facing the constraints on land use, energy resource and environment, Shenzhen has employed Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) for over a decade, with an expectation to transform its development pattern, including establishing efficient urban morphology with low cost, enhancing economic benefits of land use, preventing unreasonable urban sprawl, and encouraging public transit use. One particular pattern of TOD in Shenzhen is to bring up surrounding land development by urban rail transit. However, a representative TOD project - the first phase of Shenzhen NO.2 metro line which is one of the earliest TOD project in Shenzhen is underperforming owing to current lower ridership in several representative TOD stations than expected. But comparatively, residents in the nearby densely populated neighborhoods don't have easy accesses to rail transit like NO.2 metro line. The objective of the thesis is to explore why government planned a speculative TOD rail transit line through a reclamation zone and whether the government favors high end housing development around the project while not improving transit accesses to the densely populated neighborhoods nearby. Relevant planning documents of the project and the study area are reviewed to summarize the key guidelines and expectations for TOD of the study area. Moreover, based on Shenzhen TOD Guide and Standard, built environment of several TOD represented stations are evaluated quantitatively. Social demographics data are collected and analyzed by descriptive statistics, in order to define and assess transit equity in the research. Interviews of a government official from transportation department and a practitioner who led the projects are conducted so as to further understand the initial purpose of the TOD project, institutional and transit equity issues of the study area. Conclusions are drawn as what expectations of the TOD project are, what factors that result in high end housing development are, considerations for transit equity in study region, and what lessons the relevant agencies should learn with regard to the issues.