Local Housing Markets and Urban Form

Models of urban housing markets were originally developed with simplified assumptions including a featureless plain. Urban form in these models is a one dimensional output in the shape of housing density. Subsequent empirical developments using hedonic price modeling and sub-market models have not attempted to link inputs or outputs to urban form. This paper explores the nature of urban form and the relationship between urban form and local housing markets. First, it reviews the theoretical inter-relationships and develops a set of hypotheses. These hypotheses are empirically tested on housing markets in five British cities ñ Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leicester, Oxford and Sheffield. House price data from HM Land Registry and from the Council of Mortgage Lenders are combined with Census data and primary data on urban form to yield a unique database rich in the physical attributes of neighbourhoods and characteristics of housing . The empirical results obtained from this data are then used to determine the nature of the relationship between urban form and local housing markets.