The research elicits people's preferences for regeneration projects that change the aesthetic and use character of specified urban sites. The researchers focus on two sets of regeneration projects. The first set entails hypothetical transformations of an actual square with an important cultural and historical dimension.

The other set of projects consists of hypothetical transformations of an abstract square. Each regeneration project is defined by aesthetic and use attributes. The research results suggest that people behaved in a way that is consistent with the Random Utility Model for the abstract square, and that there are both similarities and differences between preferences for the actual and the abstract square.

When planning decisions have to be made about urban areas, and about projects for the regeneration and reuse of existing sites and public spaces in urban areas, economists would suggest that at least some consideration be given to the costs and the benefits associated with these projects.

It is, however, sometimes difficult to compute the monetary benefits of urban regeneration and restoration projects, because many of the services that they provide to the public—including aesthetic quality, comfort, sense of neighbourhood identity, town character, preservation of cultural and historical heritage, access to outdoor space—are non-market goods.

The research uses the conjoint analysis method where respondents are asked to rate, rank, or choose between hypothetical public programs or commodities described by a set of attributes. Respondents trade off the attributes of the programs or goods, one of which is usually its cost to the respondent.

The researchers used two squares:

The order in which these squares were presented to the respondents was varied in two independent subsamples, allowing the researchers to see if attributes are valued differently when they refer to abstract and actual urban sites.

The conditional logit results indicated that there are both similarities and differences in the references for regeneration plans for the two squares. Specifically, with both St. Anne’s and the abstract square, respondents deem the square more attractive if it contains more open space than buildings, and less attractive if the height of the buildings is raised.
When dealing with the proportion of the building dedicated to residential use, however, the subjects indicate a preference for increasing this proportion at the expense of retail space for the St. Anne’s, but feel otherwise for the abstract square.

Finally, the cost of the project is—all else the same—negatively associated with the probability of selecting regeneration alternative for theabstract square, a result that is consistent with our expectation. By contrast, the coefficient on the cost of the alternative is positive for transformations of St. Anne’s.

Queen's University of Belfast
Patrizia Riganti, tel. +44 28 90 27 4257

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01/09/2002

Anna Alberini, Patrizia Riganti and Alberto Longo

research

Urban Policy > Urban environment

Urban renewal