Urban Planning and Urban Morphology Variables in Defining Real-Estate Sub-markets

Abstract

One of the most important research subjects in urban economics concerns whether the real estate market is unified within the urban space, or consists of sub-markets. A review of the existing literature shows that there is no clear agreement on the definition of real estate sub-markets, with research focusing on defining their boundaries. Our effort aims to check and confirm the existence of real estate sub-markets with emphasis on the housing market applying both spatial and non-spatial approaches. For this purpose, urban planning parameters with geographic boundaries arising from the zoning system (building density and land uses), along with urban morphology parameters based on Space Syntax Theory (integration and choice) are used. Xanthi a medium size city of Northern Greece, is selected as a case study in order to check the research hypothesis. Based on hedonic model theory and spatial clustering techniques, our research confirms the hypothesis that the real estate market is not fixed across the urban space, highlighting the role of the selected parameters in shaping the boundaries, as well as in defining them. Analysis revealed that the segmentation method of the housing market based on geometric accessibility variables has a clear superiority over the urban zoning parameters.