Urban Renewal after the Berlin Wall

Gabriel M. Ahfeldt, Wolfgang Maennig and Felix Richter

SERC Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: Urban renewal areas are popular but empirically understudied spatial planning instruments designed to prevent urban decline and induce renewal. We use a quasi-experimental research design to study the effects of 22 renewal areas implemented in Berlin, Germany, to increase housing and living quality in the aftermath of the city's division during the Cold War period. Our results suggest that the policy has helped reduce (increase) the number of buildings in poor (good) condition by 25% (10%). Property prices increased at an annual rate of 0.4-1.7% according to our preferred estimates. Evidence is weak at best, however, for positive housing externalities. More generally, our findings indicate that the efficiency of program evaluations for place based -policies using quasi-experimental methods increases with the number of targeted areas and areas that provide the counterfactual.

Keywords: Urban; renewal; revitalization; redevelopment; hedonic regression; quasi-experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D62 H23 R21 R31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (38)

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http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/sercdp0151.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Urban Renewal after the Berlin Wall (2013)
Working Paper: Urban renewal after the Berlin wall (2013)
Working Paper: Urban Renewal after the Berlin Wall (2013)
Working Paper: Urban renewal after the Berlin Wall (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:sercdp:0151

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