After World War II, a large-scale urban renewal movement was launched in Europe and the United States. Owing to the war, a large number of buildings were damaged and people’s living environment was poor. Local governments began to pay close attention to the living conditions of residents, and many cities formulated large-scale urban reconstruction and renovation plans. Under the guidance of the urban planning ideology advocated by Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIMA) or International Congress of Modern Architecture at that time, which was characterized by “shape planning” and bulldozer reconstruction, many cities, such as London, Paris, and Berlin conducted a lot of demolition of old buildings in the city center and replaced them with various new “international” tall buildings (Ding and Wu, 2017). Meanwhile, several countries, represented by the United States, have also begun to focus on urban renewal to enhance the living environment. They conducted a series of slum clearance plans through large-scale demolition and clearance. The new look of the city, however, has become monotonous and inhumane, and has created a host of social problems that some Western scholars have called “the second destruction” (called the Second World War the first destruction).

From 1950s to 1960s, post-war reconstruction was largely completed in Western countries, social work was steadily advancing, and economic development was entering a period of rapid growth. Due to the continuous high economic growth, the demand for land in the cities became increasingly high. At that time, the urban renewal movement was primarily focused on intensifying the use of land in the central areas of the cities, while a large number of residential houses and small and medium-sized businesses mixed with them were replaced by large commercial facilities and high-class offices in the urban fringe. In this context, the urban central area was once prosperous. The land price in the urban central area began to soar, the city continued to spread to the suburbs, the pressure of traffic congestion continued to increase, the attractiveness of the central area decreased, and many residents moved out. As a result,“counterurbanization” became increasingly serious. From 1960s to 1970s, the focus of urban renewal gradually shifted to the improvement of the community environment. Between 1960s and 1970s, the focus of urban renewal gradually shifted to the improvement of the community environment. Some middle-class families moved back to the city center from the suburbs and residents participated in the self-build of their neighborhoods, bringing new blood into the decaying neighborhoods.

After the 1970s, urban renewal began to focus on integrated community regeneration. A social trend towards democratic pluralism emerged in some major Western countries, and a tripartite model of community, government, and private enterprise began to appear. The idea of public participation in planning, as an expression of “quasi-direct democracy,” began to be widely accepted by residents. Urban residents formed their organizations, committees, and associations to negotiate with the government and real estate developers to preserve their neighborhoods and lifestyles. Simultaneously, a bottom-up model of “community planning” began to emerge, which was a “voluntary renewal” spontaneously generated by the community. Residents desired to improve their living conditions while preserving the culture of their community. “Community planning” was small-scale and aimed to improve the environment, create jobs, and promote neighborhood harmony.

After the 1990s, the “Transit-Oriented Development” model of urban renewal emerged to deal with traffic congestion, social class division, urban sprawl, and other issues. After years of practice and exploration, it has become the primary way of urban renewal in most countries. Life cycle assessment method provides important help to the coordinated development of society, economy and environment in the planning and implementation stage of a project. It provides important parameters for the development of urban renewal strategies by identifying and quantifying energy and material use and environmental emissions, evaluating the impact of these energy and material use and environmental emissions, and evaluating and implementing opportunities to influence environmental improvement.

The above four urban renewal stages have different focuses in terms of renewal mechanisms, objectives, and methods at different times (Table 1).

In the historical process of urban renewal, the ownership relationship of building land in old urban areas is complex, and it may involve multiple subjects of property rights and use rights. Hence, it is interfered by different subjects of interests in such land preparation work related to urban renewal. Under the background of stock planning, the replacement of land property rights and the re-integration and re-use of land resources is the key to urban stock regeneration. Urban renewal work has to meet the demands of complex interest subjects for renewal as well as balance the division and coordination of interests of multiple interest subjects, which is a complex and difficult process. A successful renewal development model can achieve a win-win situation between the property rights and development subjects. The win-win situation needs to fully consider the needs of all stakeholders, and by establishing a hierarchical management and coordination mechanism that considers the interests of all parties, it is possible to eliminate the communication barriers between different interest subjects, and coordinate the interests, values, and functional needs of the public, land property users, government, and developers. This determines the process and direction of urban renewal to a large extent.

The improvement of traffic conditions is an essential element of urban renewal. With economic development and social progress, more and more families have their cars, and the number of motor vehicles has proliferated over time, causing serious traffic congestion issues in various cities. Many historical problems left behind by urban development are also important factors causing traffic congestion at this stage. The traditional urban development model of wide roads and large districts has led to low density and poor accessibility of the existing road network. Especially in the old urban areas of city centers, the travel speeds during peak hours have decreased compared to previous years and the main roads are the primary cause of delays. Traffic congestion has become a major constraint on the economic, social, and environmental sustainability of cities in the long term. In the traditional urban renewal process oriented to small car traffic, it only stays at the relatively basic level of the construction and widening of main and secondary urban roads and the interconnection and repair of feeder roads, without considering the essential relationship between urban renewal and urban traffic conditions from the perspective of comprehensive urban land utilization, and spatial development pattern and form. The lack of a systematic understanding of urban traffic congestion has further worsened the congestion on urban roads.

Social equity in the sense of urban renewal does not arise from within the people but is a process of redistribution in top-level design and planning, which can also be understood as a process of eliminating “regional development imbalances.” However, this process cannot be fully achieved by individual residents and community organizations alone, especially in urban regeneration activities that aim at efficiency and speed, which can easily lead to a lack of social equity (Kirby, 2018). Many local governments, through urban renewal, have recreated the old built-up areas of the original cities, significantly improving the living environment and infrastructure conditions of the residents and attracting a large number of middle and high-income people to move in. However, simultaneously, the increased land value and rising housing prices have forced a large number of low-income residents to move out. Although some renewal projects have allocated a certain proportion of affordable housing to meet the needs of some low-income classes, this proportion is low and has little impact. The private car-oriented urban renewal development model has caused great expenditure and inconvenience to the daily life and employment of the low-income class without a car (Buitelaara and Cozzolino, 2019). For the urban renewal work of existing urban functional areas and communities along rail transit, if there is a lack of effective and complete feedback mechanism and low public participation in the initial stage of planning and design, it is difficult to protect the vital interests of the general residents, who are the most direct users of residential functional areas. Worse still, this will be unfair and unfavorable to the advancement of the project, and will also affect the cohesion among residents, management departments, and investors (Mueller, 2018).

Protection and development is the eternal theme of urban renewal and renovation. The city’s strong historical and cultural landscape is an important part of its development momentum. Meanwhile, the development of the city provides considerable support for the protection of historical and cultural landscapes. From the material construction level, development is also for better protection. Only through a certain transformation and renovation can make urban development in line with the trend of the times to protect the historical and cultural landscape. In this sense, how to seek development in conservation and promote conservation with development is a critical part of good urban renewal work (Zhu and Chen, 2020). In the historical process of social development, the old city carries the culture and heritage of a city, and these historical and cultural features that have been baptized over the years are the soul of each city. In addition, these features have witnessed the evolution of the city and embody unique style and charm of the city, which is reflected in our psychological memory retained by the traditional historical and cultural features. Although some historical and cultural relics need to undergo some major and minor repairs with the loss of time, the fundamental physical format has not experienced fundamental changes. With the advancement of urban renewal and reconstruction, these cultural veins rooted in the depths of urban history are changing. Due to the lack of historical and cultural protection experience in many cities, massive historic and cultural relics have experienced huge damage, causing irreparable loss, although the large-scale demolition and reconstruction rapidly changed the appearance of the city (Liu, 2007; Zhuo, 2016).

With respect to the high-density built-up areas of old cities, their socio-economic structures, industrial patterns, and urban spatial forms are in urgent need of improvement. In the process of previous old city renewal and renovation, the industrial structure of some old built-up areas of cities has undergone a huge transformation. In particular, the traditional attributes of residential and cultural functions are gradually replaced by the commercial, office, and medical functions, and the public space, which is the physical carrier of cultural activities, is also gradually eroded in such renewal and renovation. Traditional neighborhoods are mostly human-scaled, while in the process of car-oriented urban renewal, the surge in the number of private cars has caused serious traffic congestion. To solve this problem, roads are inappropriately widened and newly built during the renewal and renovation process to accommodate the use of more cars. Such a chain reaction further exacerbates the shortage of urban public space. In addition, in some regeneration projects, due to the profit-seeking behavior of developers, who prefer those commercial and residential property projects with a high return value, a large number of public facilities and public open spaces are squeezed or even eliminated to maximize profits during the development and construction of the projects (Xu and Shao, 2014).

TOD advocates mixed, high-intensity, pedestrian-friendly development with public transit stops as the core area (Ding et al., 2013; Li et al., 2015). The concept of TOD has been around since before the 1990s, but it was not until Peter Calthorpe elaborated the TOD a model in detail in the book The next American Metropolis: Ecology-Community, and the American Dream Community, and the American Dream in 1993 that the concept was officially proposed for the first time (Calthorpe, 1993; Yang et al., 2020). The TOD model was first introduced as a response to the social and economic issues caused by urban sprawl in the United States. The core of its value is to build livable communities and promote sustainable urban development.

After years of research and practice, some basic principles regarding the TOD theory have been formed, the most representative of which are 3D and 5D principles. Robert Cervero and Kara Kockelman introduced the classic 3D theory (Diversity, Density, Design) after studying urban renewal in the San Francisco Bay Area (Cervero and Kockelman, 1997). The 3D theory has been taken as a guideline to provide a theoretical basis for the renewal and redevelopment of high-density old urban built-up areas (Niu, 2018). Subsequently, the 5D principle proposed by Robert Cervero was widely recognized by theoretical researchers and urban planners. The 5D principle includes density, that is, to increase the density of land development around the station as the core to improve the utilization of land and provide sufficient passenger flow for rail transit; distance, that is, the development and utilization of land around the station should be defined within a reasonable walking range, generally no more than 500 m, to ensure the comfort of walking; diversity, that is, the TOD community built with the bus station as the core contains a variety of land types and urban functions to meet the daily needs of people and reduce the proportion of motor vehicles (Ren, 2010; Ding et al., 2015); design, that is, the TOD area has good environmental design quality and a walkable roaming network system; destination accessibility, that is, the accessibility and convenience of public transportation for residents around the community should be high enough to reduce the dependence of residents on cars for travel.