Placing Transit in New Towns: Planning Paradox, Property Institution, and Urban Sprawl

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between rail transit and urban growth by revisiting Tokyo’s new towns, regarded as global exemplars of transit-oriented development. It identifies paradoxes in transit-served new towns and refines a historical institutionalist approach to their planning. In greater Tokyo, the alignment of rail transit, residential use, and private investment shaped three planned new towns, thereby situating them and metropolitan sprawl in the same urban property system. The new towns are transit-dependent without achieving self-containment. They rely on path-dependent institutions and exhibit contingent urban forms, illustrating rail transit as a multifaceted process rather than a panacea in planning.