Valuing the impacts of New Urbanism features on prices of single-family homes: A case study of Portland, Oregon

As one of the new planning approaches, the New Urbanism aims to address many of the ills of the current sprawl development pattern by returning to a compact and close-knit community development pattern. However, there are many debates about consumers' preferences toward new urbanist neighborhoods. This dissertation develops a methodological framework for assessing the value of new urbanist features for single-family properties in a neighborhood, and to apply the framework to evaluate the value of new urbanist features on single-family housing prices in the Portland, Oregon, Metropolitan Area. A hedonic housing price model is developed to estimate the actual sale price of a home using the attributes important to homebuyers which can be categorized into (1) property physical structural characteristics, (2) public sector characteristics, (3) accessibility characteristics, (4) noise pollution characteristics, (5) view amenity characteristics, (6) new urbanism neighborhood characteristics, and (7) market characteristics. The study also incorporates spatial autocorrelation adjustments in the hedonic analysis. The findings of the regression model reveal that consumers are willing to pay more for some new urbanist features such as being located within ¾-mile of light rail line; more park, light industrial uses, and transit services being provided in the neighborhood; being located not by cul-de-sacs but instead by more connective street network; more streets, shorter dead-end streets, more and smaller blocks being provided in the neighborhood, and enhanced pedestrian walkability to commercial uses. The findings also expose some of the new urbanism features that consumers do not like for the study area. Counter to what new urbanists have promoted, consumers prefer being less connected to the outside, homogeneous single-family uses being provided in the neighborhood without inclusion of multi-family residential, commercial and public land uses; and lower population and dwelling-units density in the neighborhood. This study provides some knowledge of the value residents place on different types of urban form. This knowledge would be useful to assist urban designers and urban planners in community planning, to guide officials in setting land use policies, and to inform developers in selecting proper neighborhood development pattern.