Stakeholder politics and just sustainability in TOD-Led redevelopment: evidence from a dense megacity in the global south

In densely populated megacities of the global south, rapid urbanization and limited land availability pose significant challenges to socially just and environmentally resilient redevelopment. Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) is often promoted as a compact, mixed-use alternative to car-oriented sprawl, yet its implementation unfolds through contested stakeholder politics that shape who bears costs and who captures benefits over time. This study examines how key stakeholders—including authorities, landowners, developers, and academicians—perceive and negotiate TOD-based redevelopment in Dhaka, Bangladesh, focusing on conflicts around land consolidation, distrust, governance fragmentation, and risks of exclusion and gentrification. Drawing on qualitative methods such as key informant interviews, participatory appraisal, matrix‐based prioritization of obstacles, and SWOT analysis across three TOD typologies, the research identifies how power asymmetries and institutional fragmentation constrain inclusive sustainability, just transition, and long-term socioecological transformation. The findings reveal that governance fragmentation, institutional distrust, and exclusion of vulnerable groups constitute more severe obstacles than technical or financial constraints. Given severe data limitations—notably a very small landowner sample and reliance on perceived rather than observed outcomes—the findings are interpreted as exploratory insights into how TOD shapes future urban inequalities and environmental performance, rather than as statistically generalizable evidence. Policy implications are framed as three conditional pathways: (1) Equity-contingent pathway suggest strategical involvement of vulnerable groups when power asymmetries are high; (2) Conflict-responsive pathway promotes transparent decision-documentation systems to address diverge interests; (3) Scale-dependent pathway requires nested governance structures linking neighborhood, municipal, and regional decision-making of TOD implementation.