Literature of transit oriented development has mainly focused on describing oranalyzing the built-environment around stations in operation,but largely neglected how the stationlocation was selected.We hypothesize that city governments in China are likely to put stationsoutside established suburban centers.By putting metro stations at relatively under-developedplaces,city governments can lower right-of-way cost and gain more profit in future landtransaction.Using Shenzhen as the study case,we test the above hypothesis with metro planningexamples and land transaction data from 2000 to 2014.We found that metro alignment and stationplacement has bypassed the core of established communities.This planning practice is backbonedby a strong real estate market that appreciates transit accessibility,despite the associated risk ofhigh transit operation subsidy.