A new scientific article led by Pablo Villar Abeijón , a predoctoral researcher at GEMOTT, has recently been published in the journal Cities . The work, carried out jointly with Carme Miralles-Guasch and Oriol Marquet , analyses the relationship between accessibility to daily services and the price of rent in different Spanish cities.
The article starts from a central question: does living close to essential services make neighborhoods more or less affordable? This question is especially relevant in the context of the current debate on the 15-minute city model, which promotes that people can access basic day-to-day services, such as shops, facilities or transport, within a short distance on foot or by bicycle.
Methodology
To address this question, the researchers combined proximity data to services from the MOVACTIVA Atlas with official rental price data. The analysis was carried out in four Spanish cities: Barcelona, Valencia, Palma and Granada .
Using spatial analysis techniques and segmented regression models , the study examines how the relationship between accessibility and housing prices varies, taking into account possible nonlinearities and spatial differences within cities .
Main results
The results show that, in general, proximity to daily services tends to be capitalized on in the real estate market , that is, homes located in areas with better accessibility tend to have higher rental prices .
However, this relationship is not uniform . The study reveals that:
- the relationship between accessibility and prices is not linear,
- there are significant differences between neighborhoods within the same city,
- and patterns vary according to the type of urban structure, especially between non-monocentric and polycentric systems.
Implications
Overall, the results suggest that improvements in accessibility associated with the 15-minute city model could have uneven effects on housing affordability within cities. This highlights the need to accompany urban policies aimed at improving accessibility with housing strategies that avoid possible processes of housing price hikes or exclusion .
🔗 You can read the full article here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264275126000910?via%3Dihub
