Pricing the City: How Spatial Transformations Affect Real Estate Values in Urban Areas

Abstract

Real estate values and housing prices are undoubtedly among the most reliable indicators of the positional prominence of urban areas, suitable for dynamically registering and reproducing the trend of their appeal over time. Based on the assumption that the configurational state of an urban grid is the primary element in the phenomena that occur within a settlement, this research is aimed at exploring the correlation between the distribution of property prices, as they are observed in the actual real estate market, and the configurational indices, resulting from the spatial analysis of the grid. Furthermore, on the same basis it will be argued that any significant transformation of the urban settlement, focused on some material change in its structure, as well as in its topology, is likely to strongly influence also the distribution of economic values. Such thesis will be put to concrete test in some compelling case studies, so as to demonstrate that a significant infrastructural transformation entails much more than a mere spatial and morphological variation: as modifying the distribution of configurational variables, it will also affect the socio-economic structure of the settlement. What affects the tangible city—the grid of its open spaces, the blocks and building that define them, and the physical networks that connect them—cannot but reflect on the intangible social components of the settlements—the behavioral pattern, the mutual interactions, the distribution of movement flows, the attractiveness of places-, of which real estate values prices are the most evident and straightforward clues. What planning cannot afford to ignore or disregard.