The monetary value of urban form: Examining the relationship between accessibilities and attractiveness in Oslo

Doctoral thesis, 2023

Today and for the foreseeable future we experience a global urbanisation, which requires development of buildings, roads, and plots, also called urban form. Most often it is urban planning and design that determine changes in urban form, and it should be valuable with knowledge of its monetary value. Considering both the rapid urban development and that buildings and roads are slow variables in cities, it should be an important factor for urban planning and design to be aware of the value created or lost with proposed development. This research aims to examine the nature of the monetary value of urban form by reviewing prior research and through hedonic modelling empirically estimate the marginal willingness to pay for location in Oslo, Norway. The review is conducted through an overview of previous projects from practice on the topic and a systematic review of peer reviewed papers. The empirical examination is principally built on the connection of a geographic model to quantify urban form, and an economic model to estimate monetary values. Two empirical studies are carried out to first estimate the intrinsic monetary value in urban form, and second to investigate how the monetary value changes with distance to amenities, such as parks. The findings suggest that there are indeed monetary values connected to urban form and that urban form variables in comparison with more commonly used variables to describe location have a higher explanatory degree in the economic model. The empirical findings also suggest that there are clear non-linear relationships between distance to amenities and price, indicating that not only urban form influence housing prices but also the composition of urban form. The results provide knowledge to the planning and design practice to appreciate attractiveness of aspects of plans and designs. The results also bring new knowledge to the research field of urban morphology of the monetary value of urban form and shed light on methodological deficiencies in the research field of urban economics.