Person:

Peiser, Richard

The effects of metro system development and urban form on housing prices are highly depend on the spatial temporal conditions of the urban neighborhoods. However, scholars have not yet comprehensively examined these interactions at a neighborhood-scale. This study assesses metro access, urban form, and property value at both district- and neighborhood-levels. The study area is Pudong, Shanghai where metro system development has coincided with rapid urban growth. Two hundred and seventy-nine neighborhoods from 13 districts of Shanghai are randomly selected for the district-level investigation and 31 neighborhoods from Pudong are selected for neighborhood-level investigation. The analysis of variance shows that metro access is more positively correlated to property price in Pudong than other districts. The Pearson correlation, principle component, and ordinary least square regression analyses show that while accessibility attributes have positive influence on housing prices, neighborhood characteristics also exhibit pronounced impact on property price change over time. The present study extends our knowledge on how metro system development interacts with land use efficiency and discusses planning policies that correspond to different stages of development.

Abstract Climate change will cause substantial numbers of people to relocate, whether in a planned or more ad hoc manner. In receiving communities this could lead to substantial problems supplying physical infrastructure, preserving affordability, conserving wild and productive lands, maintaining social connections, and providing community services in new areas. Moving to comprehensively planned new settlements could be a solution to climate sprawl (fragmented and dispersed development) and climate gentrification (increased demand in existing areas). This may involve moving an entire settlement as a whole to a comprehensively planned neighborhood or town. We call this “whole community” retreat as it keeps social ties intact. An alternative involves creating a comprehensively planned new town or new neighborhood for people from a variety of locations. We refer to this as “new community” retreat as it provides a new environment, but social ties need to be developed. The paper examines lessons from two sets of experiences with large scale resettlement or community-building. One group of examples involves whole community resettlements after disasters or related to economic development and a second set of precedents come from the broader history of new towns. Challenges from both resettlement experience and new town history include land and infrastructure availability and cost, planning and development coordination, financing, and attracting a large enough proportion of people to keep social ties intact. A more comprehensive approach has benefits, but is easier to pull off at a neighborhood rather than a larger scale and for shorter rather than longer moves.

This paper examines the relationship between the sale price of single-family properties and green-space characteristics for three communities in Los Angeles County. The results shed light on how green spaces geographically influence property values in two different prototypes of urban growth: planned versus unplanned communities. Quantitative results reveal that property values inconsistently reflect the five major attributes of green spaces (view, distance, size, type, character). In the planned community, active recreational green spaces have a negative impact on property values, while views, larger-sized green spaces, proximities to parks, greenways, and passive recreational green spaces have significant positive impacts. In contrast, in the communities characterized by unplanned growth, only proximity to park is directly reflected in housing values. The findings signify that different attributes of green spaces impact property values in unique ways in planned versus unplanned communities. Considering overall effects, green spaces have a more positive influence on housing values in a planned community.

For more than a century the idea of building new towns has captured the imagination of urban planners. Britain has been a centre of both theory and practice, particularly in the early years of the planned-town idea and in the golden period of new-town development from the Second World War to the middle of the 1970s (Forsyth and Peiser, 2020; Wakeman, 2016). While in the last decades of the twentieth century such developments became less common globally, a recent resurgence of activity in Asia, and increasingly elsewhere, has brought new attention to the type. Even the UK has announced a new round of garden-style developments (UK Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government, 2018; National Health Service England, 2018).