Land Values, Land Use, and the First Chicago Zoning Ordinance

John McDonald and Daniel McMillen ()

The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 1998, vol. 16, issue 2, 135-50

Abstract: This article examines whether the pattern of urban land use should have been regulated by local government in the 1920s, the decade in which many cities adopted their first zoning ordinances. The study is based on the assumption that land values are influenced by the mix of land use on the block. Conditions for land-value maximization are derived, and the circumstances under which land-use zoning can increase land values are discussed. Empirical land-value and land-use functions are estimated for Chicago in 1921, two years before the first Chicago zoning ordinance was adopted. The empirical results for land values imply that the land-use zoning system adopted in 1923 could not have brought about a general increase in land values. The empirical results for land use document the regularities in the use of land prior to the introduction of zoning. Copyright 1998 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
http://journals.kluweronline.com/issn/0895-5638/contents link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jrefec:v:16:y:1998:i:2:p:135-50

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11146/PS2

Access Statistics for this article

The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics is currently edited by Steven R. Grenadier, James B. Kau and C.F. Sirmans

More articles in The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().