Does an Urban Wilderness Promote Gentrification? A Case Study from Knoxville, Tennessee, USA

The Knoxville Urban Wilderness (KUW) is a successful example of a growing global movement to utilize vacant urban land as many cities “de-urbanize”. A key question is whether this particular kind of green space promotes social inequality via green gentrification. Our analysis shows how the KUW has affected nearby home prices. Socioeconomic data including income, educational attainment, and race is also presented to explore the possibility of gentrification in South Knoxville. Our findings do not support strong evidence of gentrification, which implies that lower-income households are benefiting from advances in environmental amenities. Other households in specific areas are benefiting from both increases in home values and from expansions of the KUW. These are encouraging results for urban planning efforts that seek to utilize large areas of vacant urban land while also having positive social and economic impacts.

How Does an Environmental Amenity Attract Voluntary Migrants? Evidence from Ambient Air Quality in China

Recent studies have shown that air quality is an important amenity for population relocation in China. However, much of Chinese internal migration occurs due to non-discretionary reasons, such as government policies, family considerations, and military personnel reassignments. As such, estimates of the impact of environmental amenities on migration that do not control for migration reasons may be biased. Using the 2015 China Migrants Dynamic Survey, this paper estimates the impact of ambient air pollution on voluntary migration to other provinces for work. We find that more polluted days (air quality index (AQI) >150) at the original residence leads to a significant increase in labor out-migration to a province with better air quality, providing evidence of the current migration trend leading to declining populations in China’s megacities. Our findings indicate that environmental migration is more favored among households that are less educated, are older, work overtime, and have lower income, suggesting that environmental migration may result from environmental health inequalities in socially disadvantaged families.

Economic Valuation of Local Environmental Amenities: A Case Study of Bahir Dar City, Amhara Regional State, Ethiopia

This study estimates the economic value of local environmental amenities in Bahir Dar city which is one of the tourist attraction sites in Ethiopia. The study employed choice experiment valuation method by identifying four environmental amenities attributes (Lake Tana, urban park, palm tree and street cleanliness). The study used probability multi-stage random sampling technique. The analysis was based on primary data surveyed from households in Bahir Dar city. The study presented nine choices set for each respondent; each choice set has three alternatives including the status quo option. The study employed a mixed logit model. The result showed that all improved attribute levels have positive signs and statistically significant. As expected and consistent with economic theory the monetary cost has negative signs and significant. The mixed logit model showed that there is preference heterogeneity in some attribute levels. Based on the finding, the study recommends that the city administration and the concerned body expected to implement the hypothetical policy scenario so as to improve environmental amenity.

The role of outdoor seating facilities for the elderly in dense settlements at Ngampilan Village, Yogyakarta

The environmental amenities of areas with a high elderly population need to be adjusted to support their lives and ensure they experience a healthy aging process. Therefore, this research examines the role of residential areas in providing support to the daily activities of the elderly for their optimal and everyday use of available outdoor seating facilities. Data were obtained from 25 outdoor seating facilities in a densely populated environment in Yogyakarta City center through observations, interviews, and person-centered mapping of the elderly as respondents. The results showed that the elderly utilize outdoor seating for social, recreation, rest, shelter, and household activities. Therefore, it is still necessary to improve the physical quality of seating in these facilities to ensure that they are maximally utilized by the elderly. The important aspect in establishing these criteria are as follows: (1) dimensions, (2) protection, (3) material, (4) Form, and (5) comfort.

Relative Prices and Climate Policy: How the Scarcity of Nonmarket Goods Drives Policy Evaluation

Climate change not only impacts production and market consumption but also the relative scarcity of nonmarket goods, such as environmental amenities. We study fundamental drivers of the resulting relative price changes, their potential magnitude, and their implications for climate policy in Nordhaus’s Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy (DICE) model, thereby addressing one of its key criticisms. We propose plausible ranges for these relative prices changes based on best available evidence. Our central calibration reveals that accounting for relative prices is equivalent to decreasing pure time preference by 0.6 percentage points and leads to a more than 50 percent higher social cost of carbon. (JEL D61, H43, Q51, Q54, Q58)

Evaluating the Impact of Floods on Housing Price Using a Spatial Matching Difference-In-Differences (SM-DID) Approach

Many applications have relied on the hedonic pricing model (HPM) to measure the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for urban externalities and natural disasters. The classic HPM regresses housing price on a complete list of attributes/characteristics that include spatial or environmental amenities (or disamenities), such as floods, to retrieve the gradients of the market (marginal) WTP for such externalities. The aim of this paper is to propose an innovative methodological framework that extends the causal relations based on a spatial matching difference-in-differences (SM-DID) estimator, and which attempts to calculate the difference between sale price for similar goods within “treated” and “control” groups. To demonstrate the potential of the proposed spatial matching method, the researchers present an empirical investigation based on the case of a flood event recorded in the city of Laval (Québec, Canada) in 1998, using information on transactions occurring between 1995 and 2001. The research results show that the impact of flooding brings a negative premium on the housing price of about 20,000$ Canadian (CAN).

The effects of land price in the peri-urban fringe of Mexico City: Environmental amenities for informal land parcel purchasers

In many developing countries, urban growth is characterised by the emergence of informal housing at the periphery. Nevertheless, there is little evidence based on data from informal land markets and, in general, studies focusing on such markets often neglect environmental factors. Therefore, to contribute to these research gaps, this article aims to enhance our understanding of land markets in informal land parcels and their relationship to environmental amenities, by providing empirical evidence from Mexico City. The article estimates a hedonic pricing model using robust ordinary least squares with a SHAC (Spatial Heteroskedasticity and Autocorrelation Consistent) inference, including structural, environmental, neighbourhood and accessibility features. Results provide empirical insights regarding the way this land market behaves in the peri-urban area. Our findings reveal that informal land parcel purchasers are willing to pay for basic services such as access to piped water, proximity to schools and accessibility features such as being close to city centre, motorways and underground stations. Although a positive relationship between land price and distance to the nearest forest or Protected Natural Area is highlighted, it is low, meaning that individuals are largely ambivalent about environmental amenities. Therefore, the problem of irregular settlements could be approached from two different angles. Firstly, informal land buyers will not desist from invading and modifying natural areas without a comprehensive urban and environmental policy, oriented towards changing the perception of green areas as potential urbanisation opportunities. Secondly, public policy needs to solve the housing supply crisis, considering the characteristics presented here.