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.