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by Trip (2007) suggests evaluating the train station area on the basis of its urban design quality that would act as a catalyst for future growth. Another attempt at Tongji University by Prof. Haixiao (2008) deals with a closer analysis of land-use differences and through property value. A more detailed approach to the analytical framework of this thesis is presented in Chapter 4. But for now the point being that admiration and awe alone will not guarantee the success of urban redevelopment schemes, nor will it alter people’s mobility patterns. To ensure success of future transport mega-projects and realise suitable land-use impacts we need to carefully analyse case studies of city-specific approach to urban (re)development.

1.2.2 Transit-oriented development in China

The theory of transit-oriented development was put in practice in China by the early 2000s through the policy of polycentric superimposition. And with the advent of high-speed trains began an era of transport mega-projects in China. However these mega-projects, though aimed for similar objectives like those in Europe, differed in certain major aspects. First, and foremost the mega-projects of China came to symbolize its rise to power (Orueta et al. 2008). This resulted in giga-projects with bundling of complex integrated transit options and vast urban development schemes. For example, Hongqiao integrated hub was designed to link airways, high-speed trains, regional trains, buses and metro with the now defunct Maglev. Second, in China the state is a hegemonic actor thus making the entire debate of public-private partnerships redundant (see esp. Shi and Huang 2013). Third, the mega-projects of China were totally new unlike the historical stations of Europe. As a consequence they could be located anywhere as per the national strategy. Thus resulting in massive uprooting and evictions (Lungo 2002; Shatkin 2008). The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE 2007, p.68; and 2008) predicted that for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, almost 1.5 million people would have been forcibly removed from their dwellings. In Shanghai the figures are unknown but the phenomena is consistent with urban conversion of rural land, and compensating villagers to move away.

Apart from these differences the mega-projects in China were consistent with the ones in Europe, emerging as ambitions urban development schemes (central business districts) and aimed as “new engines of growth” (Zhang 2007). They also have sustainable considerations based on local context. However the most important underlying urban theory of Chinese cities today is intermodality. The superimposition of slow and fast urban mobilities at a transit node combined with the creation of a city subcentre (Gœthals 2011). For example, Hongqiao hub aimed at national, regional and metropolitan levels of intermodality with a central business district as a new growth engine of Shanghai. Thus to summarise, a systematic integration of all modes of transport in which the government invested over the years with correlated land-use.