Grün als Marktwert : der Einfluss der Grün- und Freiflächen auf die Preisbildung am Grundstücksmarkt am Beispiel Wien

The quality of life in cities depends largely upon the environmental quality that defines our living and working conditions. The benefits of urban green are widely accepted. However in daily practice landscape planning is still in a weak position. Urban design, infrastructural and economic issues tend to outweigh arguments of landscape planners despite the ongoing discussion on the positive effects of urban green space. This study analyses and reviews different approaches of valuing the impact of open space in the urban environment. In recent years various ways of estimating the amenity of urban parks and public open spaces in terms of economic values have emerged. These approaches confirm the demand for urban green space and help to strengthen the position of green planning by turning soft local arguments into hard ones.<br />Urban green space quality aspects are analyzed from a theoretical point of view (top down), but they are also discussed from the users perspective (bottom up). After studying theoretical and empirical aspects of open space evaluation, an economic study is presented with data from the City of Vienna, Austria. A hedonic model is conducted to estimate the willingness to pay for green and open space quality. The hedonic model defines the relationship between residential real estate prices and the urban green space. The data includes detailed information of the citys green structure. A second source odf data used in this study is the real estate transaction database, managed by the city administration of Vienna.<br />The results of demand estimations show significant positive influence on the residetilan property prices for the city and for its sub-markets, especially for open spaces providing leisure and recreation activities. The model confirms also the demand for structural green elements in the immediate resitential neighborhood. The radial influence of urban green is much wider than expected. The measured distances clerly exceed the present guideline values of accessibility clearly.<br />The results of a Hedonic Model is closely related to the quality of the data. Though the economic valuation of urban green space cannot replace other approaches of urban green valuation, it is an important way of supplementing other methods of empirical research in open space and landscape planning.