Mixed Land Use in the Urban Environment Exploring

This cross-sectional study explores what impact mixed land-use and individual land-use types have on residential property prices per square meter (N=2488, year: 2012) in a subarea within Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Mixed land-use here is defined as “the combination of land-uses on spatial basis through the allocation of different types of uses to contiguous land-plots”. In particular the physical dimension of these uses is considered: the way they are locally experienced by residents in the urban environment. The method applied is a hedonic regression (run by STATA) with municipality fixed effects and heteroskedasticity-robust standard errors clustered at the neighborhood level in order to partly resolve the problem of positive spatial autocorrelation among residuals. The models control for average house characteristics, socio-economic features and accessibility variables on the block level. Land-use information obtained from the municipality is edited and operationalized with Quantum Geographic Information Systems (QGIS). The observations are the centers of blocks and land-use information is aggregated within buffer areas with radii of 100 meters around the centers to represent the direct living environment which residents perceive on a daily base. Physical mix is characterized by calculating indices of entropy (measure of dispersion and dominance) and fragmentation (edge-to-interior ratio) that include the elements green, water, open space, infrastructure, parking space and build-up area. Results indicate that physical mix and pattern of mix are in general not considered as relevant factors in explaining residential property price per square meter within the research area (with the two sub-municipalities “Kralingen-Crooswijk” and “Charlois” forming the exceptions). Some individual physical elements of the mix actually have a significant effect. Water bodies have consistently a positive effect and also the presence of an urban park within 500 meters of a block is positively valued. Little green parcels of land, on the contrary, are not relevant natural elements through the eyes of residents. Parking space negatively affects residential property price per square meter. When a concentric ring of another 100 meters is included in the analysis, infrastructure land-use becomes a negative factor in the first 100 meters. An increase in amount of public open space increases price per square meter. These findings can be useful for urban planners and developers in Rotterdam (or other comparable cities) as scarce space can be used more efficiently in terms of extracting higher rents per square meter dwelling. Moreover, supply of living environments will be more in accordance with (potential) residents’ demand.