Over the past two decades, the spatial development patterns of city-regions have increasingly been shaped by global-scale centripetal and centrifugal market forces. Complex managerial tasks and specialized producer services agglomerate in the central locations of global city-regions, whereas standardized assemble lines, wholesale inventories, and customer services stretch over the peripheral locations of global production networks. One explanation for postindustrial agglomeration is the need for face-to-face interactions and knowledge spillovers among the labor-intensive business sectors. On the other hand, the spatial concentrations of knowledge-based activities are also promoted by entrepreneurial city-states’ economic development strategies. Since the 1990s, rail transit investments and urban regeneration projects have played a pivotal role in shaping competitive and livable global centers to attract foreign direct investments and qualified international workers. Despite the growing importance of city and regional planning in the global marketplace, existing studies have provided little evidence on transit-oriented urban regeneration projects particularly in global city-regions.

This dissertation examines Hong Kong, Singapore, and Tokyo as three transit-oriented global center models, wherein entrepreneurial city-states have largely integrated rail transit investments with urban regeneration projects to guide postindustrial agglomeration and spur economic development in target locations. For each of the three Asian cases, I classify types of joint development packages on the basis of built environment attributes and estimate the impacts of rail transit investments and joint development packages on market location shifts and land price changes over the last decade. The empirical findings suggest that mixed-use redevelopment projects and urban amenity improvements around terminal stations largely shift the competitive advantages of knowledge-based businesses and the lifestyle preferences of highly skilled professionals towards central locations. The hedonic price models, however, reveal that the synergetic effects of rail transit investments and urban regeneration projects are highly redistributive over the rail transit networks as well as within each station catchment area,especially where urban districts are already well-developed and development regulations are generously relaxed for commercial profits.

One might argue that the Asian models represent a few extreme cases in terms of transit investment levels and urban agglomeration patterns, having very different evolutional pathways and institutional structures from other global city-regions. In response to this argument, I also attempt to illustrate specific experiences and common themes across the three Asian models and selected global city-regions that have been moving towards transit-oriented urban regeneration. The international statistics and case reviews in this dissertation suggest that there is global momentum to put greater public-private resources together into large-scale rail transit investments and transit-oriented development projects. These entrepreneurial forces tend to generate significant agglomeration impacts on knowledge-based business activities in the global marketplace, while raising transit overcapitalization and social stratification problems in the local context. The cross-cutting lessons drawn from the three Asian cases and global comparisons stress the importance of (i) evaluating urban agglomeration benefits, (ii) choosing adequate transit technologies, (iii) establishing publicprivate partnerships, (iv) applying value capture techniques and (v) ensuring local community interests in shaping “competitive” and “livable” transit-oriented global centers.

Over the past two decades, the spatial development patterns of city-regions have increasingly been shaped by global-scale centripetal and centrifugal market forces. Complex managerial tasks and specialized producer services agglomerate in the central locations of global city-regions, whereas standardized assemble lines, wholesale inventories, and customer services stretch over the peripheral locations of global production networks. One explanation for postindustrial agglomeration is the need for face-to-face interactions and knowledge spillovers among the labor-intensive business sectors. On the other hand, the spatial concentrations of knowledge-based activities are also promoted by entrepreneurial city-states’ economic development strategies. Since the 1990s, rail transit investments and urban regeneration projects have played a pivotal role in shaping competitive and livable global centers to attract foreign direct investments and qualified international workers. Despite the growing importance of city and regional planning in the global marketplace, existing studies have provided little evidence on transit-oriented urban regeneration projects particularly in global city-regions.

This dissertation examines Hong Kong, Singapore, and Tokyo as three transit-oriented global center models, wherein entrepreneurial city-states have largely integrated rail transit investments with urban regeneration projects to guide postindustrial agglomeration and spur economic development in target locations. For each of the three Asian cases, I classify types of joint development packages on the basis of built environment attributes and estimate the impacts of rail transit investments and joint development packages on market location shifts and land price changes over the last decade. The empirical findings suggest that mixed-use redevelopment projects and urban amenity improvements around terminal stations largely shift the competitive advantages of knowledge-based businesses and the lifestyle preferences of highly skilled professionals towards central locations. The hedonic price models, however, reveal that the synergetic effects of rail transit investments and urban regeneration projects are highly redistributive over the rail transit networks as well as within each station catchment area, especially where urban districts are already well-developed and development regulations are generously relaxed for commercial profits.

One might argue that the Asian models represent a few extreme cases in terms of transit investment levels and urban agglomeration patterns, having very different evolutional pathways and institutional structures from other global city-regions. In response to this argument, I also attempt to illustrate specific experiences and common themes across the three Asian models and selected global city-regions that have been moving towards transit-oriented urban regeneration. The international statistics and case reviews in this dissertation suggest that there is global momentum to put greater public-private resources together into large-scale rail transit investments and transit-oriented development projects. These entrepreneurial forces tend to generate significant agglomeration impacts on knowledge-based business activities in the global marketplace, while raising transit overcapitalization and social stratification problems in the local context. The cross-cutting lessons drawn from the three Asian cases and global comparisons stress the importance of (i) evaluating urban agglomeration benefits, (ii) choosing adequate transit technologies, (iii) establishing public private partnerships, (iv) applying value capture techniques and (v) ensuring local community interests in shaping “competitive” and “livable” transit oriented global centers.

Hong Kong has aggressively pursued transit value capture to finance railway infrastructure through its “Rail + Property” development program, or R+P. More than half of all revenues received by the MTR Corporation, the owner-operator of Hong Kong’s largest railway network, come from property development. A wide variety of R+P projects presently exist in Hong Kong. Most focus on housing development though all have some degree of commercial development. Recent generation R+P projects have placed a stronger premium on urban design and quality of pedestrian environments. This has generally paid off in the form of ridership gains and higher real-estate prices. Based on ridership modeling, an R+P station with a transit-oriented design averages around 35,000 additional weekday passengers. The biggest ridership bonus comes from transit-oriented development tied to large-scale residential R+P projects. Housing price premiums in the range of 5% to 17% were found for units built as part of R+P projects. If the R+P projects had a distinctively transit-oriented design, the premiums exceed 30%. With such success, the R+P model is being seriously considered as a means of financing rail infrastructure and advancing transit-oriented development in mainland Chinese cities. MTRC recently won a concession to apply the R+P model to finance Line 4 of Shenzen’s metrorail system. As rapid urbanization continues to paralyze the streets of many Chinese cities with traffic and threatens environmental quality locally and on the global stage, it is imperative that arguably the most sustainable form of urbanism – the linkage of land use and public-transport – be aggressively pursued. Hong Kong’s R+P model, we believe, is the best template available for achieving sustainable transit finance and sustainable urbanism.

Over the past two decades, the spatial development patterns of city-regions have increasingly been shaped by global-scale centripetal and centrifugal market forces. Complex managerial tasks and specialized producer services agglomerate in the central locations of global city-regions, whereas standardized assemble lines, wholesale inventories, and customer services stretch over the peripheral locations of global production networks. One explanation for postindustrial agglomeration is the need for face-to-face interactions and knowledge spillovers among the labor-intensive business sectors. On the other hand, the spatial concentrations of knowledge-based activities are also promoted by entrepreneurial city-states' economic development strategies. Since the 1990s, rail transit investments and urban regeneration projects have played a pivotal role in shaping competitive and livable global centers to attract foreign direct investments and qualified international workers. Despite the growing importance of city and regional planning in the global marketplace, existing studies have provided little evidence on transit-oriented urban regeneration projects particularly in global city-regions.

This dissertation examines Hong Kong, Singapore, and Tokyo as three transit-oriented global center models, wherein entrepreneurial city-states have largely integrated rail transit investments with urban regeneration projects to guide postindustrial agglomeration and spur economic development in target locations. For each of the three Asian cases, I classify types of joint development packages on the basis of built environment attributes and estimate the impacts of rail transit investments and joint development packages on market location shifts and land price changes over the last decade. The empirical findings suggest that mixed-use redevelopment projects and urban amenity improvements around terminal stations largely shift the competitive advantages of knowledge-based businesses and the lifestyle preferences of highly skilled professionals towards central locations. The hedonic price models, however, reveal that the synergetic effects of rail transit investments and urban regeneration projects are highly redistributive over the rail transit networks as well as within each station catchment area, especially where urban districts are already well-developed and development regulations are generously relaxed for commercial profits.

One might argue that the Asian models represent a few extreme cases in terms of transit investment levels and urban agglomeration patterns, having very different evolutional pathways and institutional structures from other global city-regions. In response to this argument, I also attempt to illustrate specific experiences and common themes across the three Asian models and selected global city-regions that have been moving towards transit-oriented urban regeneration. The international statistics and case reviews in this dissertation suggest that there is global momentum to put greater public-private resources together into large-scale rail transit investments and transit-oriented development projects. These entrepreneurial forces tend to generate significant agglomeration impacts on knowledge-based business activities in the global marketplace, while raising transit overcapitalization and social stratification problems in the local context. The cross-cutting lessons drawn from the three Asian cases and global comparisons stress the importance of (i) evaluating urban agglomeration benefits, (ii) choosing adequate transit technologies, (iii) establishing public-private partnerships, (iv) applying value capture techniques and (v) ensuring local community interests in shaping "competitive" and "livable" transit-oriented global centers.

A Direct Ridership Model (DRM) for predicting Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) patronage in Southern California is estimated. Attributes of bus stops and their surroundings constitute the data observations of the DRM, enabling a fairly fine-resolution of analysis to be carried out on factors that influence ridership. The best-fitting DRM revealed that service frequency strongly influences BRT patronage in Los Angeles County. High intermodal connectivity, with both feeder bus routes and rail-transit services, also significantly induces BRT travel. Population densities also contribute to BRT patronage and in the case of exclusive-lane BRT services, higher employment densities further increase higher daily boardings. The strong statistical fit of the model bodes well for DRM as a platform for estimating BRT patronage in coming years.