Addressing institutional factors for the realization of TOD potentials of near-station areas through applying a planning support system in Swedish planning cases

The article addresses institutional factors affecting the implementation of transit-oriented development (TOD) focusing on small-scale station areas and investigates the role of a planning support system (PSS) in institutional capacity-building. The focus is on the planning process, extending from early initiation and the development of planning scenarios and proposals to implementing a decided and evaluated proposal, maintaining established construction, and considering how this process relates to current planning conditions. The study is based on: a) interviews with planning actors, actor analysis and observations from a workshop series in a staged planning process for three Swedish cases of near-station densification in small urban areas; and b) a study of previous literature on institutional factors affecting TOD implementation. The main theoretical contributions of the study are: 1) a conceptual framework for analyzing institutional factors affecting TOD implementation that facilitates further research into the “processual dimensions” of TOD and helps clarify the relationship among formal structure, informal structure, and agency in the various process phases; 2) insight into institutional factors that influence TOD implementation in small-scale TOD contexts as formal or informal agency or structures that both align with and add to previous research; and 3) insight into how a PSS can support the addressing of institutional challenges to TOD implementation, where we find that the PSS of the Urban Station Communities project can support institutional capacity-building and the integration of analytical and professional knowledge, and thereby aid TOD implementation.