Citation

Yu CY, Xu M, Towne SD, Iman S. J. Transp. Health 2018; 8: 169-178.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.jth.2017.11.005

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Complete Streets are designed to allow for safe access and use for all (e.g., pedestrians, bicyclists, transit commuters, motorists) to improve mobility and accessibility. Retrofitting Complete Street designs acts as an intervention by increasing active transportation activity and providing safety benefits (e.g., reducing motor vehicle involved crashes and injuries); however there is insufficient evidence related to economic benefits of this redesign. This study applied a natural experiment design to: (1) explore the economic benefits on single-family (SF) property value appreciation before-and-after the implementation of the Complete Street during the housing market boom (from 2000 to 2007), and (2) examine the economic resilience of Complete Street designs on maintaining SF property values during the housing market crash (from 2007 to 2011) at Edgewater Dr. in Orlando, FL. Propensity score matching was used to match intervention and control residences with similar building attributes. On average, SF homes exposed to Complete Streets had 8.2% and 4.3% higher home value appreciation and home value resilience than their counterparts in the adjacent non-exposed control area during housing market boom and recession, respectively. Further, on average, SF homes exposed to Complete Streets experienced relatively higher, at 2.7% and 1.6%, home value appreciation and home value resilience than their control counterparts around the nonadjacent auto-oriented control roads during housing market boom and recession, respectively. The implications of this study can inform local planning practice providing evidence that Complete Streets perform better than conventional street designs on maintaining a 'healthy' housing market in both economic boom and recession. The economic benefits found can be integrated with research that demonstrates public health and safety benefits of Complete Streets to address the current barriers in implementing Complete Streets and support for policies facilitating the implementation of Complete Streets nationally.

Keywords

Complete Street; Economic benefit and resilience; Housing value; Natural experiment; Road diet