Planning and Design Elements for Transit Oriented Developments/Smart Cities: Examples of Cultural Borrowings

Cultural borrowing is about creative ideas that are driven forward by key people to help transform urban settlements into better places. Evidence-based planning, access to information, and globalisation are defining characteristics of contemporary practice. There are other important influences including: the antecedents of policy and guidelines for green public transport planning - especially transit oriented development (TOD); and the closely aligned “smart city” movement. Adaptability of exogenous ideas to local circumstances is paramount. A generic planning and evaluation process is proposed that has been derived from the TOD/smart city investigations and professional practice undertaken by the authors. The meaning of cultural borrowings is explained using a case study of the history of urban planning and transport in Japan. Transit oriented development (TOD) and cultural borrowings are linked with examples from Sydney, Australia, and from selected Japanese cities. Fieldwork and interviews in Japan has led to the formulation of five elements (accessibility, amenity, access, affordability and ancestry), together with their associated planning objectives and (site-specific) issues.