The incompatibility between the microscale-built environment designs around mass transit stations and stakeholders’ preferences causes dissatisfaction and inconvenience. The lack of a pedestrian-friendly environment, uncontrolled development patterns, traffic and parking issues make the street life vulnerable and unattractive for users, and affect the mass transit usage. How to design the streetscapes around mass transit stations to provide a user-friendly street environment is a crucial question to achieve sustainable transit-oriented development goals. To recognize the specific attributes of streetscape environment relevant in local context of BRT Lahore, this paper presents the results of a visual preference experiment in which nine attributes of built environment were systematically varied across choice sets. Multinomial logit models were set up to identify the preferences of three target groups: BRT users, commercial building users and residents at different locations. The research indicates that not only the road-related factors (bike lane and sidewalk widths, crossings facilities, street greenery) have a significant influence on people’s preference but also that building heights, and the typology of buildings and housing projects around BRT corridor have shaped these preferences. When planning and designing urban design projects around mass transit projects, these significant attributes should be considered.

State of the art mass transit systems, such as bus rapid transit (BRT), have appeared to be an innovative solution to meet the mobility needs of many world cities. However, their ability to transform surrounding urban fabric remains less explored in the developing world. This paper examines the impacts of BRT Lahore on land development patterns, considering the phenomena of land use revitalization, densification, and property reconfiguration. We have used quantitative approaches to gauge the changes in the urban fabric, with respect to the local neighborhood conditions and parcel level attributes, using multilevel logit models. The results of the logit models reveal heterogeneous impacts on conversions to commercial plazas, apartment buildings, and mixed-use buildings. The distance to the BRT station and size of the property is significantly associated with these conversions. Overall, one can notice a lack of a sense of place making and an absence of transit-oriented zoning around BRT stations. The desire of sustainable transit-oriented development to intensify land uses according to local conditions requires local urban designers and planners to think ahead of the curve by working on the regulatory and zoning restrictions governing the designs of built environment and also address the issues of gentrification and social inequity.

Guayaquil, the most populated city of Ecuador, evidences the urban dynamics that have determined the urban development of the region. In its fragmented urban landscape, inequalities, social fragmentation and environmental degradation configure simultaneously formal and informal territories of self-exclusion, spatial segregation and ecological risk. In the context of these socio-environmental vulnerabilities, it becomes necessary to position urban design practices in relation to socio ecological resilience frameworks to develop guidelines for spatial intervention. At a global scale, discourses dealing with urban vulnerabilities have positioned urban resilience as a desirable goal and a strategic topic for governments and planners, often focusing the implementation of top down approaches aiming to cope with the impacts of climate change and natural disasters. Leaving aside the socio-spatial dimension of the urban environments and a wide range of other vulnerabilities, plans and policies have not completely incorporated the complexity of the interplay of natural, human and spatial systems. Furthermore, only few of them have explicitly made reference to urban design, operative at the intermediate scale. Similarly, in Guayaquil, emerging concerns about the consequences of climate change have led to the development of adaptation and resilience-based strategies focusing on risk mitigation measures. The aim of this paper is to present a critical review of the approaches on the formulation of these strategies and programs. Through the review of urban resilience definitions and urban design literature in relation to resilience principles, the analysis assesses the conceptual and normative aspects behind the institutional responses for areas in the vulnerable urban edges of the city and also presents the challenges and opportunities to operationalize urban resilience through urban design.