Mobility for whom? A systematic review of the equity and environmental justice consequences of transit-oriented development

Transit-oriented development (TOD) is widely promoted as a planning strategy for improving accessibility, reducing car dependence, and supporting sustainable urban development. However, its social equity and environmental justice consequences remain fragmented across transportation, housing, land-use, and governance research. This systematic review synthesizes 179 TOD-related studies published between 1990 and April 2025 using a transparent, researcher-validated workflow supported by LLM-assisted screening, information extraction, and thematic coding. The review asks what equity and environmental justice outcomes have been identified in TOD literature and through which mechanisms TOD produces differentiated benefits and burdens. The findings show that TOD research has been dominated by built-environment and travel-behavior indicators, whereas housing affordability, displacement, environmental exposure, accessibility justice, and governance capacity are less consistently integrated. Evidence suggests that TOD can improve transit accessibility, encourage more sustainable mobility, and support compact urban development, but these benefits are unevenly distributed when accessibility gains are capitalized into land values, when vulnerable groups face residential displacement or exclusion, and when environmental improvements are not paired with affordability and tenant protections. We organize these dynamics through a spatial-behavioral-governance framework and a four-quadrant component matrix that classifies implementation measures by their immediate target (place/system capacity versus access/distribution) and primary mechanism (capital/asset delivery versus regulatory/programmatic governance). The review argues that TOD should be evaluated not only by density, ridership, or accessibility gains, but also by who captures these gains, who bears new burdens, and what governance arrangements mediate distributional outcomes. Future TOD research should strengthen causal identification, longitudinal tracking, and equity-sensitive policy evaluation.