Sustainable Mobility: How Metro Systems Drive Urban Regeneration

Contemporary metro systems are not merely public transportation networks. They are instruments of urban regeneration that stitch neighbourhoods back together, accelerate the creation of new public spaces for the urban community, and activate local economies.

From London to New York, from Sydney to Singapore, every new metro station is an “urban seed”, because around it squares, shops, services, and housing flourish. In London, for example, the Underground has always been a machine for transforming the city.

The extension of the Jubilee Line in the 2000s, with the new Jubilee Line stations, created a new skyline at Canary Wharf and revived forgotten stretches of the Thames, from Southwark to North Greenwich. With the Elizabeth Line, the same pattern was repeated: at Tottenham Court Road, the construction of the metro station triggered a rethinking of the entire Oxford Street–Charing Cross Road axis, with widened pavements, new cycle lanes, and the reopening of dozens of shopfronts.

At Farringdon (today one of the best-connected hubs in Europe), the arrival of the line accelerated the urban redevelopment of the historic Smithfield markets with creative offices and quality dining. In Woolwich, a new metro station on the south bank of the Thames, the former military warehouses of the Royal Arsenal have been transformed into residences, squares, and a neighbourhood shopping district that previously did not exist.

In essence, while people travel underground, life above ground becomes better.

The New York Subway has always been one of the great accelerators of the city’s relentless urban renewal.

On the Upper East Side, the opening of the Second Avenue Subway achieved something that had long seemed impossible: reigniting entire stretches of Second Avenue hit by the local retail crisis. The new subway stations increased pedestrian flows, leading to the reopening of many premises and the birth of local services and restaurants. The façades of many buildings were refurbished, and the streets reorganised with safer crossings.

At Hudson Yards, the extension of Line 7 breathed life into one of the largest urban revitalization projects in the United States: elevated parks, shopping galleries, offices, and residences that would not have been sustainable without a nearby metro station.

None of this is surprising, as every New York Subway entrance is a catalyst for investment and urbanization: the train brings people, and people bring urban life back.

Historically, Sydney Metro — the company behind the Australian city’s metro network development — has been one of the key players in urban growth.

For instance, the Metro City & Southwest has stitched together neighbourhoods that once seemed separated by vast distances. Around many of its subway stations (from Rouse Hill to Norwest, all the way to the new terminus at Crows Nest) the municipalities have launched targeted urban regeneration plans featuring pedestrian squares, local retail, pedestrian and cycle paths, schools, and services that have shifted the centre of daily life closer to the tracks.

In Barangaroo, renewed accessibility has transformed a port area into a promenade overlooking the bay, with offices, restaurants, and public spaces designed around the arrivals of metro trains and ferries. Sydney’s public transport is thus not just a connection, but the grid upon which the urban development rests.

The same has happened in Singapore, where the concept of the “15-minute city”, later adopted by many major global metropolises, was built precisely around the metro routes. In the city-state, every new line must create a Transit-Oriented Development — an urban model based on compact, service-rich neighbourhoods where home, work, and shopping are all within a few minutes’ walk.

In this sense, the expansion of the Downtown Line has revitalised urban areas such as Bugis and Rochor, introducing shaded public spaces, neighbourhood shopping centres, covered markets, and a dense fabric of small businesses.

More generally, across the city, metro stations are incorporated into hubs mixing libraries, gyms, clinics, schools, and every type of service, proving that the “15-minute city” can only exist if planned around underground, sustainable transportation.

In the Greater Paris area, the construction sites of the Grand Paris Express have already begun to reveal the effects the new metro system will have once completed. The municipalities involved in this vast sustainable mobility project are redesigning entire districts around the future stations.

– In Saint-Denis Pleyel, linear parks and new mixed-use developments are emerging in former industrial zones.
– In Villejuif, street fronts are being redesigned with wide pavements and tree-lined avenues.
– In Champigny, improved accessibility has spurred residential projects and local services.

Even before operations begin, the city is reorganising itself as an archipelago of interconnected centres: less long-distance commuting, more proximity. This is the very essence of the project that the Webuild Group is also contributing to, through the construction of several lines forming part of the 200-kilometre network designed to connect the main urban hubs of the Île-de-France.

The Grand Paris Express is not the only project involving the Webuild Group in which urban regeneration plays a central role. From Milan’s M4 to Rome’s Line C, from Naples’s Art Stations to Copenhagen’s circular Cityringen metro, the Group has built and continues to build metro systems that profoundly shape cities, making a vital contribution to urban renewal.

Such is the case with Milan’s M4, which connects Linate Airport to the historic centre in just a few minutes — a strategic link that has profoundly changed the face of the Lombard capital.

From the San Babila to Tricolore subway stations, and in the outer districts, the works have been an opportunity to redesign pavements, lighting, and crossings. In the Forlanini area, new accessibility has encouraged the opening of local businesses and the recovery of underused spaces, while the line acts as a backbone that shifts flows towards public transport, bringing previously peripheral parts of the city “closer”.

In Naples and Rome, by contrast, beauty and art are the focus of metro and urban development.

Beyond their extraordinary infrastructural value, projects such as Naples’s Art Stations have played a key role in the city’s renaissance, transforming everyday journeys into cultural experiences.

The same applies to the ongoing works on Rome’s Line C. From San Giovanni station, through Porta Metronia and the soon-to-open Colosseo/Fori Imperiali, to the future Piazza Venezia station, infrastructure development has unearthed a past buried for two millennia, gifting the Eternal City with museums, exhibition spaces, and unique cultural routes. Thus, the metro becomes an opportunity to enhance historic districts and their connections to the suburbs.

Accessibility, public spaces, beauty, new urban economies: reinventing metro systems means building infrastructure that does not consume land but returns cities that are closer, more liveable, and more equitable.