Station Area projects in Europe and Beyond: Towards Transit Oriented Development?

The redevelopment of railway stations and their surroundings has been high on the agenda of European cities for more than two decades. An evolving set of factors has fuelled these initiatives. Driving forces include the expansion and upgrading of rail infrastructure, the reduced demand for industrial space in central urban locations, the privatization of railways, efforts to increase the attractiveness of cities, the quest for sustainable development and – last but not least – the spatial dynamics of contemporary society. Across the different years and countries, these factors have been combined with shifting emphases, resulting in three different ways of framing station area projects, here labelled 'property capitalization', 'urban mega-project', and 'transit oriented development' (TOD). The last frame puts initiatives in Europe on a par with similar efforts in other parts of the world. In the second part of the paper global, emerging experiences with TOD are reviewed in order to draw lessons for current initiatives in Europe.