The Impact of Land Use Restriction on Housing Supply and Urban Form
by Brendan Patrick Elliott
Abstract
Rising home prices have led to public concern regarding housing affordability and availability. Interest in the role that land use regulations may play in reducing housing availability has been of increasing interest. While many of these regulations were initially implemented to preserve neighborhood character and promote sustainable growth, many contend that these regulations have the unintentional consequence of restricting supply and raising housing costs. Previous literature typically studies the impacts of land use regulation in individual cities or metropolitan areas, but questions remain whether these results can generalize to other cities across the country. Utilizing a two-time period panel dataset on city-level regulations across the nation, I assess whether minimum lot size, project approval delays, and impact fees cause a reduction in housing availability across cities. In most cases, increased levels of these regulations reduce housing availability in jurisdictions of medium to high population density whereas results are insignificant for jurisdictions of low population density.
Professor Grace Kim, Faculty Advisor
JEL Codes: R14; R31; R38
Keywords: Land Use, Zoning, Housing Supply
The Impact of Access to Public Transportation on Residential Property Value: A Comparative Analysis of American Cities
By Moses Snow Wayne
This paper develops a consistent model for analyzing the impact of access to public transportation on property value applied to the four cities of Atlanta, Boston, New York, and San Francisco. This study finds a negative relationship between increasing distance to public transit and property value. Additionally, the elicited effects in each city generally align with geographic features and the degree to which a city is monocentric. This study also demonstrates the salience of using actual map-generated distances as proximity measures and characteristics of public
transit systems in modeling the relationship between public transportation and residential property value.
Advisors: Patrick Bayer, Kent Kimbrough | JEL Codes: C12, R14, R30, R41
Understanding the Value of Amenities: A Study of the Land Value Determination Process in Hangzhou, China
By Ching-Ching Chen
This paper seeks to investigate the determinants of land within Hangzhou China. There are two main goals that the research paper will attempt to address. The first is to build upon existing research on land pricing in terms of the theories outlined by the monocentric city and hedonic pricing models. Second, the paper will use a dataset of Hangzhou land sales transactions between the years of 2003 and 2011 to investigate the possible existence of “luxury residuals” among commercial and residential land parcels. Nonetheless, due to the presence of large residuals, while Chinese consumers value certain amenities is not fully captured by these results. Rather, a number of case studies or outliers are used to fully examine the influences of these amenity variables in driving extreme prices. The result support the hypothesis that China, located at the bottom of Kuznets environmental curve, values amenities at extreme levels as a result of scarcity.
Advisor: Charles Becker, Kent Kimbrough | JEL Codes: Q51, R0, R14, R52 | Tagged: Empirical Analysis, Hangzhou Land Price Appreciation, Hedonic Pricing Model, Kuznets Curve, Monocentric City Model
