This research investigates the interplay between urban transformation and residential mobility in Shanghai, China, examining how patterns of residential mobility both reflect and shape the city’s evolving socio-spatial dynamics. It shows how shifts in housing reform, economic transformation, and urban regeneration have reconfigured residents’ movements, choices, and social positioning over time through interacting institutional and social logics. The research is grounded in an in-depth case study of Bugaoli, a historic longtang neighbourhood typified by dense, lane-style housing in Shanghai, to examine how residents’ life-course intersect with rapid urban change.

The research findings to be presented reveal in Bugaoli, for local residents, urban regeneration is not merely a physical improvement but an institutional reconfiguration that may alter their social positions and the distribution of urban resources. This perception leads residents worry that the benefits and resources originally theirs may, after urban regeneration, be taken over by more powerful or wealthier actors. Specifically, urban regeneration often only enhances the physical dimensions of communities, yet it struggles to inherit or substitute the emotional and cultural senses of belonging that residents cherish. For young residents, sufficiently high relocation compensation may serve as a pivotal opportunity for achieving class mobility. However, for elderly residents, departing from their original communities entails the loss of familiar social networks and life rhythms. Meanwhile, for lower income individuals, such compensation increasingly displaces them toward more distant suburbs. Consequently, demolition and compensation compel urban regeneration policies to confront multiple, mutually conflicting, household objectives during implementation. Therefore, the urban regeneration policies aim to improve the physical environment while preserving residents’ resources and social stability, but these goals often conflict, creating complex interest struggles and institutional challenges.

Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) is widely promoted as a strategy for sustainable urban development, particularly in rapidly urbanising regions of the Global South. As planning ideas increasingly circulate across national contexts, their implementation is shaped through processes of translation and adaptation within local institutional environments (McCann & Ward, 2012). However, despite strong policy support, TOD implementation frequently remains limited. This raises a critical question: what institutional barriers might be preventing implementation under uneven institutional conditions?

This paper conceptualises TOD not primarily as a technical or design challenge, but as a problem of institutional coordination. Drawing primarily on institutional capacity perspectives (Healey, 2002), while incorporating recent discussions on institutional mechanisms and governance arrangements (Sorensen, 2025), the paper examines how coordination processes shape planning implementation in complex metropolitan governance contexts.

Empirically, the paper investigates the Jakarta metropolitan area through a qualitative case study of the Jakarta metropolitan area Urban Transport Policy Integration Project Phase 3 (JUTPI3, 2022–2025). Using process tracing and participant’s observation, it analyses inter-ministerial negotiations, coordination attempts, and efforts to establish a Metropolitan Coordination Forum for TOD implementation.

The findings reveal that although coordination processes strengthened shared understanding and contributed to institutionalising a coordination forum, significant implementation barriers persisted, including ambiguous institutional responsibilities, fragmented funding arrangements, and uneven local institutional capacities.

The paper argues that implementation challenges may persist when asymmetries in authority, resources, and institutional capacity remain unresolved.

Financing and funding metro infrastructure remain persistent challenges for global cities. The Elizabeth line, formerly Crossrail, has been facing significant funding pressures, while its decade-long-standing former partner, MTR, has financed and funded Hong Kong’s metro expansion through an integrated rail-property model with limited subsidy. Why has that module not been translated to London over their partnership?

This study compares how London and Hong Kong capture land and property values around new metro lines and stations, and what these approaches mean for efficiency, equity, design outcomes, and long-term financial sustainability. Focusing on two major projects, the London Elizabeth Line and Hong Kong Tuen Ma Line, it examines how each city’s institutions, planning systems, and taxation arrangements shape value-capture mechanisms. Methodologically, the study combines document analysis of two decades of policy materials, project reports, and planning documents to provide a rigorous comparative assessment.

The study aims to map trade-offs between predictable, rules-based levies and flexible, negotiated development agreements; identify where value increases are missed, fragmented, or misallocated; and assess the role of station–land integration and non-fare revenues. By explaining why similar rail ambitions produce different funding and project outcomes, the findings contribute to more context-sensitive and financially sustainable strategies for metro infrastructure delivery worldwide.