Examining the Effect of Urban Rail Transit on Property Prices from the Perspective of Sustainable Development: Evidence from Xuzhou, China

Urban rail transit (URT) promotes sustainable urban development by alleviating traffic congestion and environmental degradation. However, many cities have developed URT projects recently, often encumbering local governments with debt. Land value capture (LVC) is an important theory that explores the new financing modes for urban rail transit. Despite prior studies that have found a positive relationship between URT and property prices based on LVC, limited empirical studies explore sustainable paths to better examine the effect of URT on property prices. This study collects 1036 properties in Xuzhou, China. Meanwhile, multiple regression models are established to analyze the impact mechanism of URT on property prices, and to further examine the combination effects of multidimensional neighborhood infrastructure and URT on property prices from the perspective of sustainable development. The results show that the coefficients of URT in all models are negative, indicating that the property prices decrease as the distance from the URT to the property increases, and the positive coefficient of TRANS implies that the transfer station would raise house prices. Combining Park, School (and Hospital) variables with URT, respectively, the negative coefficients of URT increase from 0.0435 to 0.0846 and 0.0525, and these URT variables are significant, indicating that parks, schools, and hospitals can enhance the effect of URT on property prices. However, adding the Shopping variable, the negative value of URT drops from 0.0435 to 0.0192, and is not significant, which means shopping centers have a restraining impact. Moreover, the combination of parks and schools (and hospitals) can better enhance the effect of URT on property prices (the highest URT negative coefficient is 0.0870). This study can provide a reference for the government to facilitate URT planning and better decision-making.