Assessing the socio-economic impacts of green/blue space, urban residential and road infrastructure projects in the Confluence (Lyon): a hedonic pricing simulation approach

Abstract

Urban green/blue spaces are put under pressure as urban areas grow, develop and evolve. It is increasingly recognized, however, that green/blue spaces provide important ecosystem services, stimulate higher real estate prices and prevent flooding problems. This paper aims to assess and compare the socio-economic impacts of potential green/blue space, urban residential and road infrastructure development scenarios in the Lyon Confluence project area (France), using the Sustainable Urbanizing Landscape Development (SULD) hedonic pricing simulation model. Results show four major tendencies regarding the value-added of green/blue spaces in urban landscapes: (1) cities become more compact; (2) population densities increase; (3) real estate values rise; and (4) demographic distribution patterns change. The magnitude of these impacts depends, however, on the quality and size of the intervention, the social classes attracted to the intervention area and on the location of the intervention relative to existing residential areas, urban centres, road infrastructure and environmental amenities.

Keywords:

• urban planning
• green/blue space
• ecosystem services
• hedonic pricing
• scenario simulation
• socio-economic impacts

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions, as well as the Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies (CESAM) and the Department of Environment and Planning (DAO) at the University of Aveiro for facilitating this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Numbers are obtained for the second, fifth and seventh arrondissement of Lyon (i.e. the arrondissements that constitute the Lyon case study area). Calculations are based on area-weighted sums/averages for the second (50%), fifth (30%) and seventh (40%) arrondissement (i.e. the shares of these arrondissements covered by the Lyon case study area).

2. See footnote 1.

3. It may be argued that the appreciation for environmental amenities varies across households. Bateman et al. (2011) show that willingness to pay estimates for environmental goods/services should be based on common drivers of preferences reflected in economic theory, including only those variables applicable across households – in particular: (1) quality of the good; (2) distance to sites; and (3) characteristics of households (particularly income). These aspects are specifically taken into account in SULD (α_q, z_iq and y, respectively) as to differentiate appreciation for environmental amenities across households.

Additional information

Funding

This paper has been developed within the context of the Aqua-Add project (Deploying the added value of water in local and regional development; http://aqua-add.eu/), co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the 11 project partners through the INTERREG IVC program. In addition, this work was supported by the EU-COMPETE and FCT within the context of the projects PEst-C/MAR/LA0017/2013 and UID/AMB/50017/2013.