Impacts of Mass Transit Railway (MTR) on urban land development : a case study of West Island line in Hong Kong

Abstract

Transportation investment impact on land development is always an attractive issue to politicians, planners, investors, developers, and academicians. It is because that transportation development is viewed as an economic growth generator, and built environment is believed to have been shaped by transportation system. In particular, rail transit system’s development and its impact on land use pattern and property development is regarded as having the ability to enhance accessibility level, consequently result in higher land value within the neighborhood, higher degree of aggregation at the center, and higher density near the stations or interchanges. Many studies have been implemented, endeavoring to reach a consensus on what the impacts are and what the functioning mechanism is. However, hardly any consensus has been reached due to the case-by-case feature of the study. With an interest in understanding the impacts of newly opened West Island Line on changes in land development at the three station areas, this study has adopted an empirical study approach based on urban economic theory of the location theory. Through the support of GIS and statistical techniques, the study of planning permission applications from 2000 to 2015 has demonstrated that West Island Line do have impacts on land development activities, since planning applications are mostly for commercial and composite residential uses, and most applications are located to the vicinity of the three stations. Moreover, three outcomes have been generated from the analysis, they are: higher value uses and developments are indeed more attractive to stakeholders, rather than low-profit constructions; planning applications tend to concentrate around station areas, rather than relatively peripheral areas; speculations of higher land value because of MTR’s development do exist. The study is believed to have the ability of becoming a reference for better developing West Island Line, as well as showing a direction for further rail transit development carried out by Hong Kong SAR Government and MTRC.