Urban Green Spaces and Housing Prices: An Alternative Perspective

Urban green spaces (UGS) are essential components of sustainable cities that provide many benefits to urban residents, such as recreation or aesthetics. Urban residents may be willing to pay for some of these ecosystem services. Indeed, studies investigating the formation of housing prices through hedonic pricing analysis have shown that UGS can influence housing prices. Hedonic pricing analysis puts housing units at the center of analysis. In this study, we investigate whether an alternative perspective provides additional insights into the effects of UGS on pricing. The proposed approach puts UGS into the center of analysis by applying an analysis of buffer zones to housing prices, thus, linking approaches from urban economics and landscape ecology. Such an analysis could deepen our understanding of the effects of UGS on housing prices by analyzing price-distance slopes around UGS-thus supporting more informed decisions on efficient UGS management and urban planning. Our results using a case study on Leipzig, Germany, demonstrate that the size of UGS affects price-distance slopes around them. We conclude that further investigations should be fathomed to unleash the potential of applying the analysis of buffer zones around UGS as a method to inform sustainable UGS design in cities.