Understanding spatial variations in the impact of accessibility on land value using geographically weighted regression

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

2011

Subject Area

land use - impacts, land use - planning, mode - tram/light rail, place - europe

Keywords

accessibility, public transport, land value, land value capture

Abstract

This paper aims to understand the spatial variability in house prices and accessibility. The motivation for understanding the connection between accessibility and house prices stem from the increasing attention given in recent years to the potential for funding transport infrastructure by land value capture policies. Establishing whether there is identifiable land value uplift and further quantifying this uplift is a pre-requisite to sensible discussion on the potential for land value capture. There has been substantial recent research in the US, but, in the UK, not only have there been fewer studies but these have concentrated on London. London, as a capital city, is different in many respects to other cities. Large conurbations such as Manchester, Sheffield and Tyne and Wear are more typical of British cities. This study focuses on the Tyne and Wear area which has an extensive public transport system with a light rail system, the Tyne and Wear Metro, forming the backbone of the public transport system. The investigation reported in this paper is underpinned by the use of Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) methodology with property prices as the dependent variable which in turn is explained by independent variables designed to standardise for household features, spatially defined factors including the transport accessibility of the house location. This methodology allows the estimation of the importance of transport accessibility in determining house prices. The empirical results show that on average the internal factors of the property and the socio-economic classification of its location are dominant determinants of property prices but that transport accessibility variables are also significant. However, the local model approach of GWR shows significant spatially varying relationship between property prices and transport accessibility to be identified. This study contributes both to a quantification of the impact of accessibility on house prices. Moreover, the paper demonstrates the application of a relatively new methodology in the transport field that elegantly takes account of the spatial nature of the data required in this process.

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Permission to publish the abstract has been given by the authors, copyright remains with them.

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