Day: 2012-02-03

Linklist: February 3, 2012

| David Levinson

Lewis Lehe @ Price Roads: Texas Equity : “If airlines were government run, then the idea of offering more expensive, non-stop flights would run into equity concerns. But airlines offer this option all the time, and no one ever complains about it. I’m starting to think the main advantage of private ownership isn’t “greed is good” or anything with incentives, but simply that private firms aren’t beholden to equity concerns whenever anything changes.”

Star Tribune: Transit officials looking to Ludwig [von Beethoven] and his posse for help: “You go up that escalator and you feel like you’re on your way to invade Poland,” said Eric Gustafson, assistant director of the Corcoran Neighborhood Organization, which complained about conduct at the station.” [Playing classical music to dissuade transit trouble-makers, we should have an ambient sound-track everywhere on land, and chase the Trouble-Makers into Lake Superior]

Calculated Risk: U.S. Light Vehicle Sales at 14.18 million annual rate in January: ” That is up 12.1% from January 2011, and up 5.1% from the sales rate last month (13.5 million SAAR in Dec 2011).”

Exhibition RoadExhibition Road officially open. This is an interesting Shared Space in South Kensington by Imperial College, the Science Museum, the V&A, and the Natural History Museum in London. Photos

Location, Regional Accessibility, and Price Effects

| David Levinson

Recently Published:

Abstract
Regional location factors exert a strong influence on urban property markets, and measures of accessibility are foremost among them. More local influences, such as proximity to urban highway links, also may positively or negatively influence the desirability of a location. This study used a cross section of home sales in Hennepin County, Minnesota, from the years 2001 through 2004, along with a set of disaggregate regional accessibility measures, to estimate the value of access to employment and resident workers. The effects, whether as amenity or disamenity, were estimated for locations near major freeway links that had recently under-gone major construction to add capacity (or were scheduled to undergo such construction) at the time of the home sales. The richness of the home sales data set allowed for control of a number of structural attributes, as well as some site characteristics. Additional neighborhood characteristics (such as income levels and local educational quality) were added from supplemental data sources. Empirical results indicated that households highly valued access to employment. Access to other resident workers (i.e., competition for jobs) was considered a disamenity. Proximity to local highway access points associated positively with sale price, whereas proximity to the highway link itself associated negatively with that price. The study concluded with some implications for research and practice of the concept and measurement of the relationship between location and land value.”