Greening Vacant Land
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Transcript of Greening Vacant Land
Greening Vacant Land
Susan M. WachterRichard B. Worley Professor of Financial ManagementCo-Director, Penn Institute for Urban ResearchThe Wharton SchoolUniversity of Pennsylvania
Green Infrastructure Symposium
October 21, 2009Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Objective: Creating communities of lasting value
From blight to hope
Quality of life for families
Neighborhoods with green space encourage community interaction, create safe blocks, bring nature to the city, promote healthy living and reduce crime rates, social isolation and visual blight
Learning how to do this is a work in progress.
Green in perspective
fostering communities that are not just environmentally sustainable
economically strong and equitable
six principles of sustainable communities outlined in the interagency partnership among HUD, DOT, and EPA: increased transportation choices
increased equitability, affordable housing opportunities
increased economic competitiveness
support for existing communities
leveraging of federal investment
value of communities and neighborhoods
City Strategies
Chicago Mayor Daley's initiative for gardens:
If city-owned, procedure exists to permit gardening with relative ease If privately owned, city assists with identifying owner and securing permission
If gardeners intend to stay for more than three years, referred to NeighborSpace, a non-profit that specializes in the management of community gardens and parks in Chicago.
CitySpace Program: unprecedented agreement between the City of Chicago, Chicago Park District, Forest Preserve District of Cook County, and Chicago Public Schools. In targeting greening projects on vacant lots, school playgrounds, and underutilized land along the Chicago River, the cooperative effort is helping Chicago achieve its open space goals, especially in neighborhoods where the amount of public land falls far below local and national standards.
http://www.afreshsqueeze.com/articleDtl.php?id=4a688243af834 New York
Bette Midler and New York Restoration Project started in 1995 to beautify open space and promote community gardening and expand community programs and encourage public pride MillionTreesNYC - started in 2007 to plant 1M trees in the 5 boroughs by 2017 http://www.nyrp.org/Parks_and_Gardens/Community_Gardens City Spaces program targets NYC neighborhoods least served by the current park system. For each $1
million playground, funding is raised by Trust for Public Land matched two-to one by the Dept of Education. TPL has created or enhanced more than 250 neighborhood parks in New York City, investing roughly $200 million in land purchases and in the design, construction, and stewardship of parks.
Flint, Genesee County http://www.thelandbank.org/
•“Green Investment Strategies: How They Matter for Urban Neighborhoods” – Susan Wachter, Kevin Gillen, and Carolyn Brown•“Transforming Through Greening” – J. Blaine Bonham Jr. and Patricia Smith
Penn Institute for Urban Research City in the 21st Century Series: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008
www.upenn.edu/pennpresswww.upenn.edu/penniur
Philadelphia Green
Neighborhood Transformation Initiative (NTI): City commits $10 million in city funds for minimum 5 years, plus $296 million in bond proceeds
Vacant Lot Clean-up Program (VLCP) under Office of Managing Direct -- $4 million to clean 31,000 lots in first year with 225 staff
Department of Licenses & Inspections certifies lot as blighted to permit city access
Philadelphia-based landscape contractors do the actual work
Community Land Care, organized by Philadelphia Green, recruits maintenance workers: great opportunity for organizations that seek work for formerly homeless, ex-convicts, etc.
Learning how to do this, a work in progress
• Stabilization/“Clean and Green”• Costs $1.50 per sq ft. to “clean and green” a lot
• Costs ~ $2000 for an average size lot
• Maintenance• Costs $0.17 per sq ft. to maintain a lot (14 clean-ups April-October)
• Costs ~ $200 for an average size lot
• Community Land Care Program and other programs
• Since inception, ~ 10,000 total parcels
• http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/64889342.html
• The Genesee County model, “State Rep. John Taylor (R., Phila.) has introduced a bill establishing a land bank to take moribund property from neglectful owners.”
Office of Sustainability
Philadelphia’s Challenges
Philadelphia GreenReclaim Abandoned Land
THE STUDIES
Green-city Strategies and Neighborhood Value
Wachter, Susan M; and Wong, Grace, “What is a Tree Worth? Green-City Strategies and Housing Prices”, Real Estate Economics, Vol. 36, No. 2, 2008. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1084652
Wachter, Susan; Kevin Gillen; and Carolyn Brown, “Green Investment Strategies: A Positive Force in Cities”, Communities & Banking, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Spring 2008. Available at: http://www.community-wealth.org/_pdfs/news/recent-articles/04-08/article-wachter-et-al.pdf
Wachter, Susan M; Kevin Gillen; and Carolyn Brown, “Green Investment Strategies: How They Matter for Urban Neighborhoods”, Growing Greener Cities, Ed. Eugenie L. Birch and Susan M. Wachter. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress), 2008. pp. 316 – 325.
Public/Private Partnershipsto Conserve and Improve Community Assets
• Problem and potential: how to realize the enormous benefits of reinvesting in blighted lands
• Private spaces: individuals respond with their own decisions and actions
• Public spaces: require shared governance and citizen stewardship for community action and public/private cooperation
Why the Study?• Need to quantify impact of policy
• Deficit in hard data
• Provide evidence as a tool for advocating for good policy
Quantification Methods
• Data on house sales, prices and location of greening investment from City and Pennsylvania Horticultural Society
• Hedonic study - before and after spatial investment impact on house prices, controlling for variables
• Geographic Information Systems (GIS) econometric methods - implemented at Wharton’s GIS Lab
Multivariate Hedonic Regression AnalysisWith the first 3 interactive terms measuring the effects of proximity to greenspace, then the estimated regression results are:
More than 30 variables are in the regression specification including: building and lot square footage, number of stories and fireplaces, garage, central air, type and condition of exterior, year of sale, census tract, distance to CBD (City Hall), and number of years since last transaction.
Adj. R2=0.60N=70,000
This regression only used data from 2000-2005. Similar regressions using data from 1980-2005 used over 200,000 sales records in the estimation.
(1.55)
......Lot) (Greened750,10$
(1.29) (3.87)
Park) Bordering(164,1$Tree) New(923,9$000,45$Pi
KK X
What matters for housing prices
Physical attributes more square footage;
a larger lot size;
better physical condition;
the presence of fireplaces, central air conditioning, and/or a garage;
Proximity to downtown
State of the overall market
Quantifying benefits of community investments
Commercial corridor improvement
Vacant land management
Neighborhood greening strategies
Business Improvement Districts (BIDs)
Impact on quality of life: schools, public safety, public transit
Vacant land management
Transition from abandonment to clean & green
Adjacency to a neglected vacant lot subtracts 20% of value
Stabilizing lots impart an additional 17% of value to surrounding homes
Impact of Public Investments
<= ¼ mile to a commercial corridor in
“excellent” condition (net impact)23% $19,021
¼ to ½ mile to a commercial corridor in
“excellent” condition (net impact)11% $9,097
Near a new tree planting 9% $7,443
Improvements to streetscapes 28% $23,156
Adjacent to vacant lot -20% ($16,540)
Adjacent to a stabilized and greened lot 17% $14,059
1% increase in crime index -14% ($11,578)
High-school dropout rate -5% ($3,970)
Located in a business improvement
district30% $24,397
<=1/8 mile to a subway station 3% ($2,481)
Neighborhood greening
Tree plantings, streetscapes -- container plantings, small pocket parks
Overall increase in house prices of 9% from tree plantings
Empirical strategy: trees
All single-family house sales in Philadelphia Housing characteristicsExact locations of house and tree
plantingsExploit the variation in time & location of
housing sales relative to those of tree plantings
Fairmount Tree Plantings Between Salescontrolling for tract-specific linear price trends
-1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6
lrprice lrpdiff lrprice lrpdiff lrprice lrpdiff
Log lagged price 0.232 0.228 0.248
(0.005)*** (0.036)*** (0.024)***
Log lotsize 0.179 0.08 0.234 0.158 0.172 0.085
(0.007)*** (0.008)*** (0.049)*** (0.056)*** (0.031)*** (0.034)**
Log building size -0.412 -0.156 -0.473 -0.301 -0.404 -0.201
(0.011)*** (0.013)*** (0.068)*** (0.076)*** (0.047)*** (0.052)***
Number of stories in the parcel -0.024 (0.004) 0.074 0.092 0.069 0.063
(0.008)*** -0.009 -0.046 (0.052)* (0.032)** (0.036)*
exterior==FRAME (0.020) (0.011) 0.057 0.048 0.047 0.057
-0.016 -0.019 -0.128 -0.145 -0.076 -0.085
exterior==STONE 0.061 0.036 0.104 0.083 (0.004) (0.038)
(0.017)*** (0.020)* -0.105 -0.12 -0.07 -0.078
=1 if parcel has a non-rectangular shape -0.034 -0.036 0.097 0.085 0.048 (0.008)
(0.011)*** (0.014)*** -0.079 -0.09 -0.049 -0.055
=1 if parcel has central air conditioning 0.143 0.135 0.213 0.029 0.170 0.004
(0.054)*** (0.064)** -0.245 -0.277 -0.236 -0.265
=1 if parcel has garage 0.106 0.043 0.091 0.045 0.066 0.020
(0.007)*** (0.008)*** (0.046)** -0.052 (0.031)** -0.035
=1 if property is detached 0.037 0.038 (0.014) 0.023 0.019 0.057
(0.013)*** (0.015)** -0.081 -0.092 -0.053 -0.059
Time since previous sale -0.073 0.308 -0.116 0.861 -0.098 0.792
(0.004)*** (0.004)*** (0.059)** (0.043)*** (0.039)** (0.030)***
pTime since previous sale 12.67 -132.491 32.852 -273.837 23.09 -267.226
(1.410)*** (1.318)*** (17.992)* (12.627)*** (12.072)* (8.832)***
Tree planting within 100ft between sales 0.134 0.092 0.027 0.003 0.038 0.020
*controlling for year and quarter fixed effects (0.038)*** (0.045)** -0.039 -0.044 -0.039 -0.043
Linear trend X census tract dummies Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Observations 71003 71003 1994 1994 4343 4343R-squared 0.64 0.21 0.75 0.54 0.71 0.45
All (ftrees) If td500=1 (ftrees) If td1000=1 (ftrees)
The visual and psychological impact of even the simplest of streetscape improvements, such as planting a tree or installing a sign, makes a huge impact on creating a quality environment and defining a place. There is no question that streetscape improvements increase housing values and make the public environment more appealing.
– Nancy Goldenberg
Vice President of Planning
Center City District
Learning How to do this: Work in Progress
Overarching Questions: How does the transformation occur? From blight to [?] Side lots Community gardens Open space Local farming
Implementation Questions: Economic development and land disposition? Land purchase or guerilla gardens? Who is to maintain? Providing for an evolving future?
But we do know that going from blight to green works!
Thank You
Susan M. WachterRichard B. Worley Professor of Financial
ManagementProfessor of Real Estate and Finance
The Wharton SchoolUniversity of [email protected]