Abstract
The concept of social vulnerability is widely studied in literature in order to identify particularly socially fragile sectors of the population. For this purpose, several studies have adopted indexes to measure the economic and social conditions of the population. The aim of this paper is to investigate the link between social and territorial vulnerability and the real estate market, by means of an exploratory analysis related to the possibility that spatial analyses can help to identify spatial latent components and variables in the process of price determination. A three phase approach is proposed, using the geographical segmentation of Turin and its related submarkets as a case study. After the identification and analysis of a set of three social and territorial vulnerability indicators, a traditional hedonic approach was applied to measure their influence on property listing prices. Subsequently, spatial analyses were investigated to focus on the spatial components of the indicators and property prices; their spatial autocorrelation was measured and the presence of spatial dependence was taken into account by applying a spatial regression. Results demonstrated that two indicators were spatially correlated with property prices and had a significant and negative influence on them. The proposed approach may help not only to identify the most vulnerable urban areas characterized by the lowest property prices, but also to support the future modification to the actual geographical segmentation of Turin.
Highlights
Urban changes are interconnected and in constant flux: economic trends, such as property price fluctuations in the real estate market, as well as social changes related to the population size and inhabitant characteristics are directly linked to processes of urban transformation
The aim of this paper is to investigate the link between social and territorial vulnerability and the real estate market, by means of an exploratory analysis related to the possibility that spatial analyses can help to identify spatial latent components and variables in the process of price determination
Analysis of open census data available for each census cell and identification of a set of three social and territorial vulnerability indicators to identify the urban areas where the most fragile groups of the population are concentrated; Traditional hedonic model to measure the influence on property prices of the three indicators and some physical characteristics of buildings and apartments; Spatial analyses to focus on the spatial components of the significant indicators and property prices and to show the related types of spatial autocorrelation (LISA)
Summary
Urban changes are interconnected and in constant flux: economic trends, such as property price fluctuations in the real estate market, as well as social changes related to the population size and inhabitant characteristics are directly linked to processes of urban transformation. The most distressed urban areas, that might be located in marginal areas or in historical city centres, have to be identified and analysed in order to monitor social and economic trends. The identification of these fragile areas can be supported by the creation and the application of specific indexes and indicators able to represent significant socio-demographic characteristics of a population and to highlight new social trends.
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