Urban Renewal after the Berlin Wall

Gabriel Ahlfeldt, Wolfgang Maennig and Felix Richter

No 49, Working Papers from Chair for Economic Policy, University of Hamburg

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)
Pages: 67 pages
Date: 2013-11-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Published in Hamburg Contemporary Economic Discussions, Issue 49, 2013

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.hced.uni-hamburg.de/WorkingPapers/HCED-049.pdf First Version, 2013 (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)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hce:wpaper:049

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