Investigating the Impacts of Property Walking Accessibility on Housing Affordability and Equity: Evidence from Shanghai, China

Recent studies have yielded some interesting insights into the impacts of a property's walking accessibility on housing affordability and equity from the potential property owner's perspective, and limited attention was paid from the renter's perspective. This study investigates the impacts of eight types of property walking accessibility and other variables on the second-hand residential property (SHP) price and residential rental property (RRP) rent. It uses a sample of 6,603 SHPs and 3,566 RRPs that were collected in Shanghai, China, in 2021. A modified floating catchment method is used to quantify walking accessibility to eight destinations. Geographically weighted regression models are estimated to study the similarities and dissimilarities of the impacts of a property's walking accessibilities, inherent attributes, and transit time to major transportation hubs on the SHP price and RRP rent. In addition, it factors the distinctive regional and political characteristics in China, which include massive internal immigration, rapid urbanization, and household registration and housing price control policies. These results provide a more comprehensive understanding of the spatially varying impacts of property walking accessibility on housing affordability and equity. In addition, these results highlight the intensifying jobs-housing imbalance, ever-increasing commuting time and cost, and decreasing overall quality of life in metropolises, particularly among migrants and future property owners. For property developers and investors, these results demonstrate that improving the property walking accessibility might yield spatially varying returns across regions. From the perspective of planners and policymakers, these results and insights could be used to design policies and strategies, such as cooperative governance and low-income rental housing, along with walking accessibility improvement development to address the urgent need for affordable housing and equity in China.