Rail transit and the growth of consumer amenities: evidence from Chinese cities

One of the reasons cities are attractive is the rich array of urban amenities they provide. In this study, we examine how investments in urban rail transit affect clusters of consumer amenities in China, based on the experiences of six Chinese cities that are at varying stages of rail transit development. A difference-in-differences model is built using geocoded data on wide categories of consumer amenities to estimate the rail transit effects from a sample of 315 new rail transit stations opened between 2015 and 2018. Our results show that the opening of a new station induces an increase of approximately 4% in the total number of consumer amenities in the vicinity of the station within the first year. The impact strengthens substantially after two years. The effect of rail transit varies across cities and among different neighborhoods within a city. In most cities, rail transit effects are stronger in central areas, contributing to agglomeration of retail and dining amenities. When the rail system expands rapidly, however, the opening of a new station tiggers greater growth of daily service amenities in the suburbs, leading to a decentralization effect. Additionally, we find that neighborhood purchasing power and transit-adjacent land supply have limited impacts on amenity growth driven by new rail stations. This study provides important insight into how public amenities interact with private amenities and its findings have significant implications for urban planners and policymakers.