Urban parks,value uplift and green gentrification: An application of the spatial hedonic model in the city of Brisbane

This paper explores the impact of urban parks on real estate prices making use of a hedonic price approach. Focusing on Brisbane, Australia, as a case study site, we use spatial hedonic models to analyse housing sales data across 15,000 sales transactions to investigate the effects of parks on nearby housing prices, paying attention to park typology and classification. Our findings indicate that recreational and sport parks are differently associated with price variations. The study also examines a specific and significant inner-city park currently undergoing a major redevelopment—namely Victoria Park. Our analysis of the Victoria Park site seeks to quantify the value uplift, that is, the future increase in property prices as a result of the transformation of the current private golf course in this location into a new publicly accessible parkland. This study’s property economics modelling analysis indicates the conversion of Victoria Park from a golf course to public parkland will increase property prices by an average of 3 % for properties located within 750 m of the park. The article concludes with a discussion of value capture opportunities that these findings present as well as challenges of green gentrification for this and similar urban renewal projects and possible policy responses.     

Forests improve qualities and values of local areas in Denmark

Afforestation can create multiple societal benefits. One fifth of the Danish municipalities plans to afforest in the next 5 years, amongst other reasons to attract new inhabitants. The attractiveness and values of afforested areas have been investigated in two independent Danish studies. In the first study qualitative and quantitative surveys in two municipalities indicated that forests improved quality of life of the respondents. A short distance from the residence to nearest forest usually resulted in a higher frequency of forest visits and a more positive view on the nature qualities of the local area in general, compared to respondents living further from forests. Proximity to nature, including forests, was furthermore mentioned as the most important reason for choice of their present home by 17% of the respondents. These results are supported by the second study in which house prices are used to elicit the residents' valuation of forested housing areas. By using the hedonic price method house owners' willingness to pay for proximity to forests was found to be significant and positive, and in most circumstances the aggregated value is expected to exceed the cost of afforestation.     

Public purchases and private preferences: Challenges for analyzing public open space acquisitions

The traditional hedonic model uses market purchases to estimate implicit prices. Hedonic models composed of only public land purchases violate key assumptions of hedonic model theory. The resulting implicit prices cannot be interpreted as the purchasing agency's maximum willingness to pay. The problems are illustrated using a hedonic model of public land purchases in the Town of Brookhaven, on Long Island, New York, USA. The model reveals negative elasticities for attributes for which the agency has stated positive preferences. For example, the presence of unique glacial landforms (a positive attribute) was associated with a 97% increase in property cost. However, if purchasing the open space property prevented development that is incompatible with existing land uses (also a positive attribute), the property cost decreased by 69%. The results confirm that elasticities and implicit prices derived from open space “public hedonic models” should be interpreted in the context of the broader market for land, not as the agency's willingness to pay. The work has implications for open space preservation policies in urbanizing regions.     

Variations in municipal urban forestry policies: A case study of Toronto, Canada

Urban forest conditions are driven by a range of biophysical and social factors, including urban form, socioeconomic conditions, and municipal policy. However, relatively little attention has been paid to policies, particularly those aimed at private property. The purpose of this study was to identify the types of urban tree policies that exist in the Greater Toronto Area, begin to understand why those variations may occur, and determine if such variations lead to on-the-ground differences. To address these objectives, we conducted a survey to identify policies covering the planting and removal of privately owned trees, as well as publicly owned trees along roadways in 29 municipalities. The results of the survey were then compared to census and vegetation abundance data to determine the relationship between municipal characteristics, level of policy adoption, and on-the-ground differences. We found substantial variation in the type of policies in place, with regulations addressing tree protection on private property occurring only in larger municipalities. The existence of on-the-ground differences was less clear, possibly because of the relatively recent adoption of most policies. These results highlight the need to assist smaller municipalities in developing urban forestry policies and to monitor these policies’ influence over the long term to better understand their role in shaping the urban forest.     

Willing partners? Residential support for municipal urban forestry policies

Cities across North America are adopting ambitious goals to grow their urban forests. As existing trees and new planting opportunities are often located on private property, residents’ support and participation is needed in order to meet these goals. However, little research has examined support for municipal urban forestry efforts, including policies specifically targeting residential areas. The objectives of this research are to (1) assess resident’ level of support for common urban forestry policies and (2) determine if there are specific household characteristics associated with different levels of policy support. The objectives are addressed through a statistical analysis of survey responses and a qualitative examination of follow-up interviews with residents in four neighborhoods located in Mississauga (Ontario, Canada). The survey participants and their properties vary in their socioeconomic characteristics, age of development, and urban forest conditions. Our results found that the majority of residents had neutral to very positive attitudes toward common municipal policies encouraging planting and restricting removal of trees, but support levels were lower for the policies than for general statements about desired presence and size of urban trees. Several characteristics are significantly related to level of policy support, including age of household members, education-level, property-level tree density, recent tree planting activity and age of house. Interviews also highlighted residents’ apprehensions about living among tall trees and older resident's concerns with tree maintenance. The results suggest that most residents would be willing partners in urban forestry efforts, with many of these residents already actively planting and maintain trees. However, to increase support and participation rates, different types of trees – including those smaller in stature and ones that require relatively little maintenance – should be part of any planting program to meet the varying needs of households.     

Individual households and their trees: Fine-scale characteristics shaping urban forests

In urban areas, the pattern of trees is often a result of municipal policy, built form, neighborhood socioeconomic conditions, and the actions of local actors. Recent research has focused on the role of neighborhood socioeconomics, and begun to explore the underlying causes of uneven distributions of urban forests associated with different socioeconomic groups. To date, little work has explored property-level tree conditions in relation to disaggregated household characteristics and actions, yet the household is the scale where most decisions about residential tree planting and care are made. This study examines the role of property-level built conditions, household socioeconomics, and residents’ actions and attitudes in relation to property-level canopy cover and tree density. The study area is four neighborhoods in the City of Mississauga (ON, Canada). Regression analyses were conducted to explore significant variables related to the two tree measures for all properties together and separately by neighborhood. The results indicate that property conditions and residents actions are more important in relation to tree variations than socioeconomic factors. Additionally, several significant factors have opposite relationships with percent canopy cover and tree density. These results highlight the need to consider property-level built conditions, residents’ actions, and multiple measures of the urban forest to better understand the patterns of trees in cities.     

Beyond participation! Social innovations facilitating movement from authoritative state to participatory forest governance in Ukraine

Tuning participatory processes is often insufficient to achieve transition from authoritative state to democratic and participatory forest governance due to institutional inertia and unwillingness to truly decentralize decision-making power. Social innovations as reconfigurations of relationships between state, market actors, civil society and science can help to meet concerns of local people about forest Ecosystem Services (ES). In Ukraine, the Swiss-Ukrainian Forest Development (FORZA) pilot project initiated a social innovation process complementing regional forest planning with local participatory community development plans in Transcarpathia. This paper examines what kind of changes need to accompany the succession of participatory practices in transition processes from authoritative state to democratic forest governance, and what are the lessons learned for social innovations based on the Ukrainian case study. This paper synthesizes knowledge on the FORZA case analyzed by inductive content analysis, and integrates these local level results with a national survey (N?=?244) on Ukrainian forest governance. Transition processes need to go “beyond participation” by (i) legal reforms to better acknowledge ES important for local people, (ii) a change from an exclusive focus on timber to acknowledging multiple ES, (iii) changed spatial and temporal rationales of state-based governance, and (iv) recognition of local people as credible experts. Social innovations can detect key barriers to the transition during the policy experiments, and need to pay significant attention on how the novel practices can be sustained after the pilot, replicated elsewhere and up-scaled. Without such considerations, social innovation projects may only remain as a marginal curiosity.

     

追求人与自然的和谐--探讨当今住宅景观设计

追求人与自然的和谐共存是人类的崇高目标,而注重诗意一般的居家生活环境已成为人们的共识,景观化的住宅已成为理想家园的首选。本文尝试从继承中国传统造景艺术的精华,结合现代景观设计理念,阐述山水、绿化、设施等构成景观的元素,从而倡导人性化、个性化、多元化的住宅景观设计。     

The effect of short-term socio-economic and demographic change on landuse dynamics and its corresponding geomorphic response with relation to water erosion in a tropical mountainous catchment,Ecuador

The analysis of aerial photographs over a 33-year period (1962–1995) shows that land use in the study catchment is highly dynamic as a response to the land reform programs of the 1960s and 1970s and a strong population increase. The secondary forest is increasingly replaced by grassland while old grasslands are now used as cultivated land. Despite the increased pressure on the land, the upward movement of agricultural activity and the concurrent deforestation, the overall forest cover did not decline. The deforestation in the uplands is compensated for by a regeneration of secondary forest on abandoned rangelands and afforestation with Eucalyptus trees in the low-lying areas. The land use changes resulted in a strong decrease of the areas subject to intense soil degradation: afforestation with Eucalyptus trees on degraded lands was successful in controlling soil erosion in the lower parts of the catchment. The relationship between land use and sediment load in the river system is not straightforward. Statistical analysis of a time series of suspended sediment concentrations, which were measured at the outlet of three distinctive sub-catchments for a six-year period (1994 – 2000), revealed that the geomorphic response of the river system is not only dependent on the land use and the area affected by water erosion, but also on the spatial connectivity between sediment producing areas and the river network.This revised version was published online in May 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.