IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_4533.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Urbanity

Author

Listed:
  • Gabriel Ahlfeldt

Abstract

I define a composite amenity that provides aesthetic and consumption value to local residents: Urbanity. A novel data set of geo-tagged photos shared in internet communities serves as a proxy for urbanity. From the spatial pattern of house prices and photos I identify the value of urbanity in two of the largest European cities, Berlin and London. I find an elasticity of indirect utility with respect to urbanity of about 1%. The aggregated willingness to pay equates to about $1 bn per year in each city or, on average, 1.5% of household income. The results demonstrate the important role cities paly as centers of leisure, consumption and beauty.

Suggested Citation

  • Gabriel Ahlfeldt, 2013. "Urbanity," CESifo Working Paper Series 4533, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_4533
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp4533.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt & Stephen J. Redding & Daniel M. Sturm & Nikolaus Wolf, 2015. "The Economics of Density: Evidence From the Berlin Wall," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 83, pages 2127-2189, November.
    2. Hans R. A. Koster & Jos N. van Ommeren & Piet Rietveld, 2016. "Historic amenities, income and sorting of households," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 16(1), pages 203-236.
    3. Ahlfeldt, Gabriel M. & Georgios, Kavetsos, 2010. "Form or Function? The Impact of New Football Stadia on Property Prices in London," MPRA Paper 25003, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Gibbons, Stephen & Machin, Stephen, 2005. "Valuing rail access using transport innovations," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 148-169, January.
    5. Patrick Bajari & Matthew E. Kahn, 2005. "Estimating Housing Demand With an Application to Explaining Racial Segregation in Cities," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 23, pages 20-33, January.
    6. Rosen, Sherwin, 1974. "Hedonic Prices and Implicit Markets: Product Differentiation in Pure Competition," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(1), pages 34-55, Jan.-Feb..
    7. Gabriel Ahlfeldt, 2011. "If Alonso Was Right: Modeling Accessibility And Explaining The Residential Land Gradient," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(2), pages 318-338, May.
    8. Brueckner, Jan K., 1987. "The structure of urban equilibria: A unified treatment of the muth-mills model," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: E. S. Mills (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 20, pages 821-845, Elsevier.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ahfeldt, Gabriel M., 2013. "Urbanity," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 59244, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Gabriel M. Ahfeldt, 2013. "Urbanity," SERC Discussion Papers 0136, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    3. Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt & Nancy Holman, 2018. "Distinctively Different: A New Approach to Valuing Architectural Amenities," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(608), pages 1-33, February.
    4. Mathilde Poulhes, 2017. "From Latin Quarter to Montmartre Investigating Parisian Real-Estate Prices," Working Papers 2017-13, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    5. Gabriel Ahlfeldt & Kristoffer Möller & Sevrin Waights & Nicolai Wendland, 2012. "On prisoner's dilemmas and gilded cages: The economics of heritage preservation," ERSA conference papers ersa12p783, European Regional Science Association.
    6. Gabriel M Ahlfeldt, 2013. "If We Build it, Will They Pay? Predicting Property Price Effects of Transport Innovations," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 45(8), pages 1977-1994, August.
    7. Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt & Wolfgang Maennig & Felix J. Richter, 2013. "Urban Renewal after the Berlin Wall," Working Papers 049, Chair for Economic Policy, University of Hamburg.
    8. Felix Richter, 2014. "Winner Picking in Urban Revitalization Policies: Empirical Evidence from Berlin," ERSA conference papers ersa14p1424, European Regional Science Association.
    9. Waights, Sevrin, 2018. "Does the law of one price hold for hedonic prices?," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 55(15), pages 3299-3317.
    10. Gabriel Ahlfeldt & Pantelis Koutroumpis & Tommaso Valletti, 2017. "Speed 2.0: Evaluating Access to Universal Digital Highways," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 15(3), pages 586-625.
    11. Hans R.A. Koster & Jan Rouwendal, 2012. "The Impact Of Mixed Land Use On Residential Property Values," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(5), pages 733-761, December.
    12. van Vuuren, Aico, 2022. "Is There a Diminishing Value of Urban Amenities as a Result of the COVID-19 Pandemic?," IZA Discussion Papers 15025, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Ahlfeldt, Gabriel M. & Nitsch, Volker & Wendland, Nicolai, 2019. "Ease vs. noise: Long-run changes in the value of transport (dis)amenities," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    14. Ahlfeldt, Gabriel M. & Maennig, Wolfgang, 2015. "Homevoters vs. leasevoters: A spatial analysis of airport effects," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 85-99.
    15. Ahlfeldt, Gabriel M. & Heblich, Stephan & Seidel, Tobias, 2023. "Micro-geographic property price and rent indices," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    16. Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt & Georgios Kavetsos, 2014. "Form or function?: the effect of new sports stadia on property prices in London," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 177(1), pages 169-190, January.
    17. Teulings, Coen N. & Ossokina, Ioulia V. & de Groot, Henri L.F., 2018. "Land use, worker heterogeneity and welfare benefits of public goods," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 67-82.
    18. Ioulia Ossokina & Coen Teulings & Henri de Groot, 2014. "Welfare Benefits of Agglomeration and Worker Heterogeneity," CPB Discussion Paper 289, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    19. Panduro, Toke Emil & Jensen, Cathrine Ulla & Lundhede, Thomas Hedemark & von Graevenitz, Kathrine & Thorsen, Bo Jellesmark, 2018. "Eliciting preferences for urban parks," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 127-142.
    20. Ahlfeldt, Gabriel M. & Wendland, Nicolai, 2016. "The spatial decay in commuting probabilities: Employment potential vs. commuting gravity," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 125-129.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    amenities; consumer city; hedonic analysis; photography geography; property prices;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R20 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - General
    • R30 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_4533. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.