The Quali-Quantitative Structure of the City and the Residential Estate Market: Some Evidences

Abstract

In the collective imagination there are masterminds speculating on real estate and so defining the “price of the buildings” in a sort of transposition in reality of Hands over the city plot. Although it is not the case, the distribution of prices in the contemporary city is a big deal for policy-makers and urban planners as well. Especially in metropolitan areas, where polarization of services is needed, the high complexity of urban scenarios makes the prediction of price variation due to change in the morphology or in the offer of services (for example in transportation and accessibility) very unreliable, despite of the success of policy and planning actions is strictly related to its control. This paper, moving in this perspective, points out some evidences on the relationships between the quali-quantitative structure of the city and the fluctuation of real estate prices with reference to house market, under the idea of investigating what is the role of urban railway stations. As a matter of fact, railway stations are nodes of the transport network as well places of the urban environment whose big impact on accessibility in the city and the corresponding contribution in the definition of property values is very intuitive. The findings on the effects of railway stations on property values are mixed, since they vary on magnitude and direction. This paper focuses on the comparison of the impact of urban railway stations on the residential estate property values as well on the structure of the city in itself, grasped in terms of configurational state. To this aim, the paper proposes a case study, evaluating how the correlation among configurational indexes and residential values distribution varies with and without the presence of the railway system. The main findings of the work make to arise a marginal or negative impact of the railway system, so as to promote the idea that other factors dominates the change in local property values around railway stations. Finally, the authors proposes the integration of ontologies and configurational analysis to define a methodological framework able to explain the state of residential estate market.