The value of Green and Blue spaces given house prices and walkability

Abstract

Urban green and blue spaces are important amenities within highly urbanised areas which offer social, economic and ecological benefits and provide a number of valuable direct and indirect ecosystem of services to surrounding land uses, urban households and are integral to sustainable urban development. Existing research has revealed that green (and blue) space is not a uniform environmental amenity but rather a set of distinct goods with quite different impacts on the house prices. This disequilibrium in green and blue spaces and their aesthetic and hydromorphological characteristics and indeed management of green and blue spaces therefore impact upon and influence house prices in different ways. Moreover, the different utility-bearing preferences for green or blue space has been shown to be related to income and education levels and inequalities driven by socioeconomic differences. Hence, the relationship between housing prices and amenities might vary considerably across a wide metropolitan area. Consequently, the purpose of this study is to examine the heterogeneity of green and blue space using 4,985 sales transactions applying quantile regression to investigate the proximity effects of diverse types of blue spaces on property prices across different conditional distributions. The findings provide empirical evidence to inform urban design and planning in line with sustainable development goals and biodiversity strategies for inclusive, and accessible public spaces within cities and preserve biodiversity, enhance community cohesion, civic identity, and quality of life.