Urban Land Value Research Articles

Impact of Short-Haul High Speed Rail Commuting on Land Use and Spatial Structure in a Multi-Centre Metropolitan Area

Owing to the enhanced accessibility afforded by high-speed rail, the relationship between megacities and their neighboring cities has grown closer. Megacities exert a significant influence on the land use of neighboring cities. This study employs a spatial econometric model to investigate the direct impact and spatial spillover effects of high-speed rail on urban land values, based on urban panel data from China’s Yangtze River Delta region (2006-2020). The results revealed that shorter commuting times and improved frequency of service had a more substantial effect. Additionally, due to alterations in land values, there is a distinct preference tendency for urban land use attributes. Therefore, the city’s spatial organization has transformed, and its center of gravity has shifted as well. This study provides crucial theoretical justifications and empirical evidence to fill the gaps left by previous research on the effects of short-haul high-speed rail commuting on urban housing prices and land use. The study also offers valuable insights for strategic planning and implementation aimed at promoting urban development and urban agglomeration construction through HSR construction.

The spatial impact of international reconstruction aid in the aftermath of the 2015 Gorkha earthquake

The 2015 Gorkha earthquake in Nepal caused significant property and life loss, triggering a large influx of international reconstruction aid. This paper investigates the spatial implications of this international aid, particularly in Lalitpur. It examines how aid from NGOs and bilateral and multilateral agencies affects urban spaces, including rent, land values, and infrastructure distribution. The study focuses on Wards hosting aid projects and personnel and compares these to earthquake-affected Wards without aid presence as a counterfactual.Two key points emerge: 1) The clustering of aid organization headquarters (operational presence) creates negative externalities, favoring a rentier class over equitable distribution of housing and infrastructure. 2) Aid-funded reconstruction projects (project presence) shift amenities and businesses, accelerating inequity in ways distinct from operational presence. Two Wards in Lalitpur show notable negative impacts, including rising rents, changes in small businesses, and a shift towards catering to the rentier class due to the effects of aid.The research provides policy recommendations for local governments and disaster management authorities in Nepal to address these unequal impacts. Recommendations include monitoring and evaluating aid effects over time, collaboration, and the promotion of transparency in urban development and fiscal resilience.

Transportation, decentralization, and path dependence: How did the old tramway shape Shanghai, China?

This article studies the short- and long-run economic consequences of the now-extinct Shanghai tramway. Tramway was the primary mode of transportation in Shanghai between 1908 and the 1930s, continuing to operate until 1975. With the geolocation of the tramway lines on both historical cadastral maps and current Google maps, the article finds that after the arrival of the tramway, land lots close to the tramway lines experienced a larger increase in land value relative to those far away from the tramway lines, and that the reduction in transportation costs led to a flattening land value gradient with respect to distance from the central business district (CBD). It also finds that the tramway still influences the current pattern of urban land value, even nearly fifty years after the removal of the last tramway track. Such persistent influence can be largely explained by the follow-on amenities near the tramway lines. The evidence found in this article suggests that the tramway in Shanghai promoted decentralization by enhancing accessibility to the CBD from distant locations in its heyday, and influences modern behaviors through the mutually reinforced private and public coordination of economic activities.

The spatial overlay effect of urban waterlogging risk and land use value

Urban waterlogging poses a severe threat to lives and property globally, making it crucial to identify the distribution of urban value and waterlogging risk. Previous research has overlooked the heterogeneity of value and risk in spatial distribution. To identify the overlay effect of urban land value and risk, this study employs the Entropy Weighting Method (EM) to assess urban value, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to determine waterlogging risk and key areas (RK), local Moran's I (SC) to identify key areas (HK), and finally Bivariate local Moran's I (DC) to comprehensively evaluate urban value and waterlogging risk to delineate key areas (BH). The results indicate that waterlogging risk is primarily influenced by proximity to water systems (PCA coefficient: 0.567), population density (0.550), and rainfall (0.445). There is a positive correlation between urban value and waterlogging risk, with a global Moran's I of 0.536, indicating that areas with higher urban value also face greater waterlogging risk. The DC method improved identification precision, reducing the BH area by 6.42 and 3.51 km2 compared to RK and HK, accounting for 25.50 % and 15.76 % of the RK and HK identified areas, respectively. At present, rescue resources can access less than one-third of the area within 5 min, but with the DC method, during the centennial rainfall scenario, the accessibility rate within 5 min for the BH area reaches 63 %, and all BH key areas can be covered within 15 min. This study provides a new methodology for identifying key areas of waterlogging disasters and can be used to enhance urban rescue efficiency and the precision management of flood disasters.

Investigating the mechanisms of sustainable urban land renewal: A perspective of spatial development rights

Urban renewal, as an important means of promoting sustainable urbanization in the stock era, is essentially a process of redistributing land appreciation benefits caused by spatial development rights. However, current literature mostly analyzes the traditional two-dimensional renewal model from the perspective of market mechanisms, which leads to the inability of urban land renewal mechanisms to adapt to sustainable urban development. Therefore, taking Shenzhen as an example, our study aims to understand the spatial mechanism of urban land renewal from a three-dimensional perspective of spatial development rights. Using geographically weighted regression and two-stage least squares regression, we found that the objective of value analysis has shifted from the common minimum unit of land to local space. Moreover, affected by the surrounding environment and various supporting public service facilities, the existence of spatial heterogeneity leads to significant differences in the value of the different functional space within same geographical ranges. The influence intensity of economy, society, and environment shows a decreasing pattern in space from the center of the region to the outer circle of the region. We not only construct a sustainable urban land renewal framework based on three-dimensional spatial property rights, but also distinguish the mechanisms and endogenous issues for different functional spaces. Our study could make a great difference in adjustment of urban land development rights and value acquisition.

Urban Densification Strategy and Land Value in Tijuana, Baja California - The Opinion of Specialists

Specialists can provide opinions regarding the city and land value based on their specialized field. Professionals in these fields are identified as urban planners and valuators, who play a crucial role in the current dynamics of cities. They have a qualified opinion on city issues based on their professional practice in various areas of expertise. This opinion was obtained through the formulation and application of a questionnaire to specialists. Subsequently, the results were analyzed and graphically represented. In the discussion, several findings were found related to the relationship between land value and the urban densification policy established in the urban planning that governs the city of Tijuana, Baja California. The study investigated the behavior of the real estate market in the region and the establishment of a solid strategy toward densification.

Unsettling in Norrland

This research uses film, photography and projection to analyse the changing space of Northern Sweden (Norrland). This peripheral region is one of the most rapidly reconfiguring spaces in Europe, with on-going programmes of corporate and state investment to exploit space and natural resources for settlement and extraction.
 The images are part of an archive of the moving of buildings, a common practice in the region. Buildings are moved in relation to changing environmental conditions and now urban land values and global property speculation. It is understood to be a distinct process of what David Harvey has described as “remaking capitalism’s geography”1
 Images analyse the material conditions, ideology and power in this frontier economy. The project considers an architecture of de-growth2, challenging ideas of the expanding urbanisation of Norrland. As land values and modes of occupation change, buildings are displaced from the urban centre to increase occupation density through speculative investment. This process displaces social space and previous land formations. The city of Kiruna has been entirely displaced by expanding mine workings. The practice of relocation also has the capacity to shift large-scale historic architectures, as a distinct form of caretaking.
 In this moment of new waves of investment in mining and forestry, of urbanisation of parts of the region, predicated on an underlying and largely uncontested agenda of ‘development’, the archive offers other conceptions of space and architectural production.
 The images consider the wrenching of a house from its location and moving it to another location, documenting this process of detachment. It records the re-arrangements of space between land and building. Displacement is illuminated through projections to unsettle, by superimposing architectures onto previous conditions. Keywords: Unsettling, de-growth, relocation, house-moving, displacement.
 Cover image: Robin Serjeant, “Midwinter projection inside the house.”, Degernäs, December 2021, Film stills

Urban intensification and land value capture in Toronto: Conjunctural analysis, critical junctures, and developmental pathways in urban planning.

Toronto has for 70 years been one of the fastest growing city-regions in North America, and over the last two decades has seen booming high-rise intensification. A distinctive land value capture (LVC) system and practice has emerged. This paper traces the contested evolution of Toronto LVC since 1946, including recent major changes to the rules, and makes three main contributions: First is the suggestion that at its core, LVC is an attempt to purposefully alter the distribution of the costs and benefits of urban property development between public and private actors, and should be considered a key metric to evaluate the social equity of property development processes. Second, conjunctural analysis has recently emerged as an approach to reading the intersection of political, economic, social, and ideological processes that come together to produce historical changes in specific cases. I argue that Historical Institutionalism (HI) is a valuable complement to the conjunctural analysis approach in its focus on the genesis of and contestation over specific sets of institutions. HI provides a set of midlevel conceptual frameworks and research methods to identify major institutions, the actors involved, and institutional change mechanisms, processes, and patterns. I bring together two hitherto separate traditions of thought about conjunctures, that arising from Gramsci through Stuart Hall, and that developed in HI, arguing that HI brings analytical clarity to the comparative analysis of conjunctures. Third, the Toronto case is revealing of processes of institutional change, mechanisms supporting path dependence, and the urban impacts of globally hegemonic ideological conjunctures.

Representing the Profession and Protecting the Past: Mitchell/Giurgola and the AIA Competition in Washington, DC

In 1964 the American Institute of Architects (AIA) launched a competition to redevelop its headquarters at the Octagon Building (1801) in Washington, DC. The Kennedy Administration had recently reset the direction of Federal architecture and committed to new legislation to protect the historic environment. But while the government embraced architectural modernism in this period there was uncertainty about how architects should relate new buildings to existing cities. This paper examines the competition-winning entry by Mitchell/Giurgola and the design review process that unfolded in its wake. Doing so reveals competing aspirations for the site and professional disagreement about how new and old buildings should be related in such situations. The paper argues, however, that forces beyond architecture, notably urban land value and the responsibilities of the profession to its members, crucially shaped the outcome, depriving Washington, DC of an exemplar for how contemporary architecture could engage with valued existing buildings.

Retracted: Using Social Media Data to Explore Urban Land Value and Sentiment Inequality: A Case Study of Xiamen, China

Retracted: Using Social Media Data to Explore Urban Land Value and Sentiment Inequality: A Case Study of Xiamen, China

The Impact of Urban Street Network on Land Value: Correlate Syntactical Premises to the Land Price

Recent literature has highlighted the critical issue of urban land value and cost; properly assessing land use costs, particularly for residential and commercial purposes, is crucial in influencing urban development and investments. Therefore, the objective of this research is to create a model for land pricing that considers the urban street networks and hierarchy; by analyzing the spatial plan of the city using space syntax and evaluating the economic impact on land value, the study aims to identify the factors that influence land prices. Furthermore, the study intends to investigate the correlation between urban spatial networks, street hierarchy, and land price to create a predictive model for urban spatial land pricing. Ultimately, the study has successfully built a model for predicting the price of urban land. The case selected is evaluated and compared in three aspects of the analysis, including the urban axial assessments and urban street width, to find out their impacts on the real estate’s land price in the context of the land use distributions, which are predominantly residential and commercial types of uses. Depth map X8, SPSS, and QGIS 3.16 were used for the study evaluations and assessments. The study found that land prices are influenced by factors such as integration, connectivity, and street width. Commercial zones with good integration and wider roads tend to command higher prices, while narrow local roads generally have lower prices. This result can enhance future urban design regarding urban economy improvements and land costs.

Integration of Market Price Comparison Approach and Income Capitalization Approach in Urban Land Valuation

Land is one of the economic goods. The high demand for land while the land supply is fixed, causes the increase in land prices to be out of control. Land is closely related to the cadastral system. The cadastral system is the driving force behind the operation of a land administration system that integrates the functions of land tenure, land value, land use, and land development. A complete cadastre has a component in the form of a cadastral map that is connected to juridical data records, including land values and their designations. Land value is the product of land valuation. Land valuation consists of several approaches, namely market price comparison approach, cost approach, and income capitalization approach. Estimating urban land values requires rapid and accurate land valuations. This research integrates the market price comparison approach and the income capitalization approach. Geostatistical analysis is applied in land value modeling. The resulting mathematical model of land value is expected to reflect the actual value

The Investment Case for Land Tenure Security in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Cost–Benefit Analysis

AbstractGovernment is the custodian of the most critical (and limited) factor of production, namely, land. Assuring the security of tenure, arbitrating disputes, and facilitating the transfer or sales of titles renders the land market more efficient and less volatile, attracting investors and promoting sustainable urban development. Land tenure security is also a critical government service that has repercussions on agricultural productivity, housing development, business investment, and the development of urban areas. However, land administration is mired in corruptive practices, elite capture, and inefficient allocation. Globally, only 24% of rural areas are mapped (46 in urban areas), with approximately the same percentage registered, that is, 22%. In Africa, only about 14% of rural land is formally recorded in a public register. Land tenure security can take a variety of forms depending on national regulatory frameworks that allocate land and specify its use. Success stories include transferable user certificates in China and individual land titles in Rwanda. Systematic evaluation of the evidence on tenure programs demonstrates that improved tenure security increases agricultural output (40% on average), increases urban land values (25% on average), and increases household welfare (15% on average). Other observed country-specific benefits include additional years of schooling, better academic performance, access to credit, reforestation, and improved household nutrition. The costs of establishing tenure security in Sub-Saharan Africa include the separate costs of rural (US$ 3 billion) and urban (US$ 2.2 billion) land registration; the cost of digitizing land registries and information to improve efficiency and transparency (US$ 880 million), the cost of strengthening institutions and systems to resolve land disputes and manage expropriations (US$ 960 million) over a ten-year implementation period, and land administration operations and land records maintenance over 30 years (US$ 64 billion). The net present value (8%) of costs is US$ 21.7 billion for rural land tenure and US$ 5.3 billion for urban areas. The benefits of rural land registration were based on the observed 15% household wealth effect noted in the literature. The net present value (8%) of a 30-year benefits stream is US$ 396 billion. The benefit–cost ratio of completing and modernizing land registration and improving land administration coverage and effectiveness in rural Sub-Saharan Africa is 18. The benefits of urban land registration were based on the average 25% increase in property values observed in the literature. Using housing prices for the 20 largest, Sub-Saharan African countries, the net present value (8%) of the benefits over a 30-year period is US$ 237 billion, yielding a benefit–cost ratio of 45 when the average housing price is used. When the population-weighted housing price is used, benefits are valued at US$ 160 billion, yielding a benefit–cost ratio of 30.

Spatial variation of the determinants affecting urban land value in Thiruvananthapuram, India

PurposeLand value varies at a micro level depending on the location’s economic, geographical and political determinants. The purpose of this study is to present a comprehensive assessment of the determinants affecting land value in the Indian city of Thiruvananthapuram in the state of Kerala.Design/methodology/approachThe global influence of the identified 20 explanatory variables on land value is measured using the traditional hedonic price modeling approach. The localized spatial variations of the influencing parameters are examined using the non-parametric regression method, geographically weighted regression. This study used advertised land value prices collected from Web sources and screened through field surveys.FindingsGlobal regression results indicate that access to transportation facilities, commercial establishments, crime sources, wetland classification and disaster history has the strongest influence on land value in the study area. Local regression results demonstrate that the factors influencing land value are not stationary in the study area. Most variables have a different influence in Kazhakootam and the residential areas than in the central business district region.Originality/valueThis study confirms findings from previous studies and provides additional evidence in the spatial dynamics of land value creation. It is to be noted that advanced modeling approaches used in the research have not received much attention in Indian property valuation studies. The outcomes of this study have important implications for the property value fixation of urban Kerala. The regional variation of land value within an urban agglomeration shows the need for a localized method for land value calculation.

Spatial Efficiency and Socioeconomic Efficiency in Urban Land Policy and Value Capturing: Two Sides of the Same Coin?

Land policies are commonly used to contribute to the implementation of the public policy of land-use planning (or spatial planning). In this sense, a spatially efficient land policy must allow the planning systems to achieve the land uses promoted by strategic planning. In addition to their role in land-use planning, land policies also contribute to public finance policies. From this perspective, a socioeconomically efficient land policy must allow public authorities to capture land value. The research presented in this article aimed to contribute to planning theory by initiating a reflection on the interactions between spatial and socioeconomic efficiency in land policy. In our view, to consider those two dimensions in a more integrated way can help in the development of the growing research field on land value capture. Our research is based on the general assumption that there are processes of mutual strengthening and blockages between spatial efficiency and socioeconomic efficiency in land policy. In order to test this assumption, an international comparison methodology was developed. In order to develop a robust methodological approach, our exploratory comparative approach is based on a theoretical framework that depicts an ideal planning system. This ideal planning system serves as a benchmark for two empirical case studies on Norway and Belgium. Through our research, we find evidence of the interdependency of spatial efficiency and socioeconomic efficiency. The results of the two case studies therefore indicate that our initial assumption is generally confirmed. However further investigations are needed to deepen our exploratory discussion of the topic.

Assessment of aerial thermography as a method of in situ measurement of radiant heat transfer in urban public spaces

Urban public spaces are an essential part of the urban environment, supporting social relationships and promoting a healthy lifestyle among citizens. However, the high value of urban land has led to an over-urbanisation of cities, increasing urban heat stress and decreasing the number and size of public spaces. Rising air temperatures in cities – known as the urban heat island effect (UHI) - combined with global warming, make public spaces less comfortable. For these reasons, there has been a growing concern to improve the thermal comfort of urban spaces. Thermal radiation is a determining factor in urban thermal comfort and is normally summarised in a value called mean radiant temperature (TMRT). In the past, conventional methods have been used to calculate it, such as net radiometers and globe thermometers. In recent years, the scientific community has used ground-based handheld thermal cameras for its quantification. However, there is a lack of literature on the use of aerial thermography for this purpose (i.e. an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) equipped with a thermal infrared device). Given this gap in the literature and the advantages in time, versatility and accuracy of these systems, this paper presents a new method for assessing the measurement of radiant heat transfer in a pedestrian urban space using aerial thermography. From the surface temperatures of the infrared imagery collected by the UAV, TMRT was estimated at multiple points in a pedestrian area of a subtropical city (Huelva, Spain) during a typical summer day. In order to verify accuracy of the proposed method to estimate the TMRT, a microclimate urban simulation was carried out using ENVI-met v5. The comparative analysis of the measured and simulated dataset verified the applicability of aerial thermography for the measurement of radiant heat transfer (with R2 values of 0.98 for the data set and 0.8 for the data of each time period). To conclude, new strategies were proposed to improve urban thermal comfort and to make cities more sustainable.

Urban land valuation with bundled good and land residual assumptions

This paper develops a new approach to estimate the value of urban land. We extend AMM theory by adding the assumption of partial irreversibility. Bundled goods assumptions imply that land value with a structure can evolve differently than as-if vacant value, even in the first decades of structure life. We develop a hybrid model that nests bundled goods with land residual methods and we develop a new test of predictive accuracy. Granular house price indices produced by machine learning are used to estimate hybrid economic structure and land values.We fit hybrid models to Maricopa County assessor data on houses up to 25 years old during a bust and recovery period (2007–2018). Results support structure value that evolves at some fraction (<1.0) of property value: i.e., partial bundling. The hybrid model achieves substantially lower Coefficients of Dispersion (CODs) than the land residual method, and both methods easily beat standard AVMs that do not separate land and structure values.

Using Social Media Data to Explore Urban Land Value and Sentiment Inequality: A Case Study of Xiamen, China

Differences in urban land values affect residents’ living experiences and may contribute to sentiment inequality. Due to the popularity of smart mobile devices and social media platforms, online tweets with location information can be used as objective information to reflect sentiment differences of urban residents in different locations, overcoming the limitations of previous studies with small sample sizes or a lack of spatial information. Sentiment quantification based on deep learning enables the identification of spatial patterns of urban residents’ sentiments. It also provides a new approach for analyzing data from big data platforms using an intelligent computing platform. This paper quantitatively analyzes the sentiment contained in social media tweets using a deep learning sentiment analysis algorithm to reveal inequalities between urban residents’ sentiments and land values. The Baidu Intelligent Cloud sentiment analysis platform is used to identify 460,000 Weibo tweets in Xiamen, China, in 2020. We quantitatively analyze the positive and negative sentiments of residents and create a spatial distribution map. The concentration curve indicates sentiment inequality and the impact of high land values on residents’ sentiments. The positive sentiment concentration index (CI) and correlation analysis show that the CI value is 0.07, and significant sentiment inequality exists due to the high land value. The use of social media tweet data to analyze sentiment inequality provides a reference for future interdisciplinary research in psychology, urban planning, geography, and sociology. The proposed approach of analyzing social media data using an intelligent computing platform provides new insights into multiplatform data interaction in the context of the Internet of Everything.

Mass appraisal as affordable public policy: Open data and machine learning for mapping urban land values

Updated cadastral land values are a matter of critical importance for local governments: higher revenue of property taxes, more equitable treatment to taxpayers, a fundamental input in the design of public policies related to access to land and housing for the most vulnerable and a key feature in land value capture strategies to finance public infrastructure, to name just a few public policies that require correct valuations of land. However, in Latin America, outdated cadastral values are common to most cities. The reasons for this can be found in the complexity of the mass appraisal process, lack of institutional and fiscal capacity to undertake it and bureaucratic resistance to its implementation.The objective of this paper is to present a mass appraisal methodology that uses only free and open data to achieve robust urban land valuations. Information from the OpenStreetMap Project is used to generate several land variables. In addition, the Global Human Settlement Layer of the European Commission is used to determine the level of consolidation of urban sprawl. Land value data were obtained from the Mapa de Valores de América Latina, a collaborative initiative that systemizes more than 68,000 data from more than 900 cities.This information is used to train three tree-based machine learning models: Random Forest, Quantile Random Forest and Gradient Boosting Model. The results support the viability of the proposed strategy, simplifying the mass appraisal process in terms of costs, time and complexity of the information used.

Redevelopment of urban brownfield sites in China: Motivation, history, policies and improved management

Rapid urbanisation in China has resulted in an increased demand for land in towns and cities. To upgrade and modernise, China has also moved many major industries from urban centres to less populated areas. With the high economic value of urban land, the transformation and utilisation of brownfield areas have become important economically and socially. The Chinese government has recognised the need for strong frameworks to safeguard soil and groundwater quality, with brownfield sites a key category for management. Strong scientific, regulatory and decision-making frameworks are needed and being adopted to ensure practical, careful and wise use of central and localised government resources, to manage the reuse and regeneration of these brownfield sites. This paper reviews the context, policies and management procedures of developing brownfield sites in countries with a history of brownfield management and discusses China’s current situation and priorities for brownfield governance and redevelopment. These include (1) clarification of brownfield site soil contamination risk control standards and risk assessment procedures, (2) the responsibilities of different national and local agencies, (3) the establishment of a national expert committee to advise on best practices, policy and process, (4) the use of registered brownfield databases at national, provincial, municipal and county levels, and (5) the set up of soil pollution prevention fund at the provincial level.