Impacts of transit oriented development on housing market in Guangzhou

Abstract

Mass rail transit continues to play an important role in urban development and environmental sustainability worldwide, especially in China. Transit-oriented development (TOD) is a useful strategy to amplify benefits brought by transit accessibility as the synergic result of the mixed land-use, higher density and pedestrian-friendly design in station area. However, there are limited empirical studies discussing how transit-oriented development amplifies the transit accessibility on housing prices in the context of China and the different behaviors of homebuyers in higher-, medium- and lower- priced housing. In order to fill this research gap, this research examines the quantile effects of transit-oriented development on residential property prices in Guangzhou using ordinary regression model and quantile regression model on 23,279 residential property transactions around metro stations from 2015 to 2019. The regression models, controlling for unobservable district and seasonal effects, reveal that the association of transit-oriented development with residential property prices shows mixed results in Guangzhou’ city center area and suburban area among higher-, medium- and lower- priced housing. Different from previous studies of TOD, the dataset that contains various TOD attributes is established from multiple sources, including accessibility, efficiency, walkability, bike sharing friendly design, mixed land use in each metro station area, in order to provide more comprehensive understanding of the impacts of TOD. This study is one of the first studies to estimate the quantile effects of transit-oriented development on residential property prices in the context of China. The key findings show that, firstly, the trade-off relationship between housing price and transportation cost will be influenced by the transportation cost reduction brought by walking and cycling environments. Different from the reverse-U shape of the residential properties prices and distance to transit station that was identified widely in previous studies, a reverse-W shape is validated in this research as the result that the accessibility to a transit station is enhanced by walking and cycling improvements at different distances. The second finding is that the largest positive effect of accessibility to transit station is found among households in neighborhoods with lower-priced housing. Thirdly, this research distinguishes and estimates the empirical results of the impacts of various TOD attributes on housing prices across various quantiles. This study will provide more comprehensive insights for policymakers, home buyers, as well as developers. It helps policymakers coordinate the interests of various stakeholders, under restriction of amount of investments, with proper space zoning, vertical transportation organization, bike sharing parking design and mixed land used, to enlarge the convenience and accessibility generated by transit-oriented development.