Transit-oriented development (TOD) is based on the idea that it is beneficial to coordinate urban development and public transportation policies to increase residential and commercial use around transit stations. TOD is commonly assumed to be a rational and sustainable way to accommodate demographic growth associated with accelerated urbanization, by producing higher densities and greater sustainability in metropolitan areas (Knowles & Ferbrache, 2019). This sustainability dimension articulates around “3Ds”: density of development, diversity of land use, and design of pedestrian environments (Calthorpe, 1993).

We argue that TOD does not always deliver on the objectives it ostensibly wants to accomplish but instead might lead to less sustainability and more social injustice. Investigating two recent major TOD operations within two international cities which have had a very tense housing market since the 2000s (Toronto, Canada and Geneva, Switzerland), this article aims to show that TOD might produce neighbourhoods that are far from being sustainable. This is because developers and local authorities focus on density, while overlooking the quality of the built environment. Thus, these TOD neighborhoods generate new sustainability issues. First, new housing prices target middle and high-income households, thereby gentrifying the area. Second, hosting few green spaces but a lot of glass and concrete, these TOD neighborhoods become urban heat islands.

However, to gain political support for their projects, developers need to create a narrative fostering a desirable and sustainable future. Besides that, the temporality of this narrative needs to be dissociated from the temporality of the planning schedule (Ameel, 2021). This article will thus specifically investigate how the realization of our two TOD case study neighborhoods (Toronto: Vaughan Metropolitan Centre, subway extended in 2017; Geneva: “CEVA cities”, train line inaugurated in 2019) has been sustained by a sustainability narrative articulated around architectural design, energetic performance and the creation of green spaces.