What Is the Effect of Cultural Greenway Projects in High-Density Urban Municipalities? Assessing the Public Living Desire near the Cultural Greenway in Central Beijing.

Haiyun Xu,Meng Miao,Fan Fu

doi:10.3390/ijerph19042147

Abstract

Cultural greenway projects (CGPs) are widely regarded as an urban planning approach which connects open green spaces and sites of sociocultural value to provide access to living, working and recreational spaces and enhance local social well-being. This paper examines the impact of such CGPs on public living desire before and after a given project is completed through analyzing housing prices in the surrounding area. We deployed a hedonic pricing model (HPM) and differences in differences (DID) model to analyze and record any changes in housing market trends that may have been caused by such a cultural greenway project. Via analysis of single-family home sale transactions in central Beijing from 2013 to 2017, we found substantial evidence that proximity to a cultural greenway project is positively linked with rising property prices. Once complete, CGPs were similarly associated with positive increases per HPM and DID modeling. Our results revealed that the distance to greenway contributed significantly positive impact on the housing market after the cultural greenway project completed. Moreover, our result indicated that once a CGP was open to the public, it increased the price of properties within 1 km by 13.3%. Seller and buyer expectations of the development of local, green public infrastructure also began to factor into housing prices prior to the greenway opening to the public. Post-completion, the positive trend in property pricing due to local CGPs indicates that the public still have an increasing desire to live near the greenway. These results will help policymakers better understand how cultural greenways affect neighborhoods in high-density urban contexts, and will support the development of urban greenway policies for cities in China that reap the maximum economic benefit.

Highlights

What few studies there are do show that greenways are regarded as amenities by residents. They are willing to pay extra to travel for recreation to such greenways, and are willing to pay more for properties near greenways to live around. This public living desire may lead to the price fluctuations we discovered in the local housing market near Cultural greenway projects (CGPs)
Our study assessed the effects of a new cultural greenway project (CGP) on public living desire through direct analysis of the local housing market
Despite the fact that there have been many scholars who report a positive relationship between green spaces and neighboring residential property values, we believe our paper makes significant contributions along the following three directions: firstly, previous papers mainly focus on general green spaces, while our study focuses on CGPs

Summary

Introduction

They are willing to pay extra to travel for recreation to such greenways, and are willing to pay more for properties near greenways to live around This public living desire may lead to the price fluctuations we discovered in the local housing market near CGPs. Prior studies have deployed hedonic price studies to show a positive association between natural amenities (including greenways) and neighborhood property values [19,20,21]. Prior studies have deployed hedonic price studies to show a positive association between natural amenities (including greenways) and neighborhood property values [19,20,21] These studies mainly focus on examining the influence of natural amenities in general as opposed to greenways alone, which means the characteristics of cultural greenways in high-density urban contexts are rarely considered

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion