Assessment of street-level greenness and its association with housing prices in a metropolitan area

Abstract

Rapid global urbanization has made environmental amenities scarce despite their considerable advantages, ranging from aesthetics to health benefits. Street greenness is a key urban environmental amenity. This study developed a green index as an objective measure of greenness using street view images and assessed its predictive power along with that of other environmental amenities for metropolitan housing prices. Spatial interpolation was used to transform point data into areal data, enabling effective analysis of a dataset covering an entire metropolis. A series of hedonic models revealed that (1) street greenness is significantly and negatively associated with housing prices, (2) a traditional greenness indicator and the green index provide complementary information, indicating that they could be used for different purposes, and (3) environmental amenities, in general, demonstrated significant relationships with housing prices. Our analysis strategy including spatial interpolation can be widely employed for studies using different types of data. The findings demonstrating a complementary relationship between our two greenness indicators provide valuable insights for policymakers and urban planners to improve street-level greenness and green accessibility. Considering the significance of environmental amenities, this study provides practical approaches for executing sustainable and healthy city development.