Ideas, Interests, and Institutions: Explaining Dutch Transit-Oriented Development Challenges

As a planning concept, transit-oriented development (TOD) has become popular in the Netherlands over the last few decades. However, the transition from planning concept to development practice has been fraught with difficulties. Where TOD projects have been implemented, they have often met with limited success in terms of livability and market viability. This paper examines TOD-related efforts in the Netherlands and the reasons for their difficulties up to now. The analysis is built around an analytical framework, which considers the role of ‘ideas’, ‘interests’, and ‘institutions’, as well as their interaction, in affecting the outcomes of these TOD efforts