Environmental amenities of urban rivers and residential property values: A global meta-analysis

Flood insurance is a driver of population growth in European floodplains

Future flood risk assessments typically focus on changing hazard conditions as a result of climate change, where flood exposure is assumed to remain static or develop according to exogenous scenarios. However, this study presents a method to project future riverine flood risk in Europe by simulating population growth in floodplains, where households' settlement location decisions endogenously depend on environmental and institutional factors, including amenities associated with river proximity, riverine flood risk, and insurance against this risk. Our results show that population growth in European floodplains and, consequently, rising riverine flood risk are considerably higher when the dis-amenity caused by flood risk is offset by insurance. This outcome is particularly evident in countries where flood risk is covered collectively and notably less where premiums reflect the risk of individual households.

Racial, Ethnic, and Socioeconomic Disparities in Multiple Measures of Blue and Green Spaces in the United States

BACKGROUND

Several studies have evaluated whether the distribution of natural environments differs between marginalized and privileged neighborhoods. However, most studies restricted their analyses to a single or handful of cities and used different natural environment measures.

OBJECTIVES

We evaluated whether natural environments are inequitably distributed based on socioeconomic status (SES) and race/ethnicity in the contiguous United States.

METHODS

We obtained SES and race/ethnicity data (2015-2019) for all U.S. Census tracts. For each tract, we calculated the Normalized Different Vegetation Index (NDVI) for 2020, NatureScore (a proprietary measure of the quantity and quality of natural elements) for 2019, park cover for 2020, and blue space for 1984-2018. We used generalized additive models with adjustment for potential confounders and spatial autocorrelation to evaluate associations of SES and race/ethnicity with NDVI, NatureScore, park cover, and odds of containing blue space in all tracts (n=71,532) and in urban tracts (n=45,338). To compare effect estimates, we standardized NDVI, NatureScore, and park cover so that beta coefficients presented a percentage increase or decrease of the standard deviation (SD).

RESULTS

Tracts with higher SES had higher NDVI, NatureScore, park cover, and odds of containing blue space. For example, urban tracts in the highest median household income quintile had higher NDVI [44.8% of the SD (95% CI: 42.8, 46.8)] and park cover [16.2% of the SD (95% CI: 13.5, 19.0)] compared with urban tracts in the lowest median household income quintile. Across all tracts, a lower percentage of non-Hispanic White individuals and a higher percentage of Hispanic individuals were associated with lower NDVI and NatureScore. In urban tracts, we observed weak positive associations between percentage non-Hispanic Black and NDVI, NatureScore, and park cover; we did not find any clear associations for percentage Hispanics.

DISCUSSION

Multiple facets of the natural environment are inequitably distributed in the contiguous United States. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP11164.

Spatial-temporal patterns of summer urban islands and their economic implications in Beijing

Urban heat island (UHI) has a great influence on human wellbeing in urban areas. Previous studies have investigated impact on environment, ecosystem, and human health of UHI. To investigate economic impact of UHI is a lack of research. In this study, spatial-econometric hedonic housing price models are developed for estimating the marginal value of summer UHI in Beijing, China. The results showed that UHI effects in Beijing became severe from 2015 to 2017. The heat islands showed a mix of high and sub-high land surface temperature (LST). The spatial Durbin model estimates that one-unit increase of UHI intensity (UHII) would lower the housing value by 3.91%. Regarding the different districts, households had different attitudes to the UHI effect. Specifically, households regarded UHI effect as amenity in the four suburban districts with hills and relatively low LSTs; however, in most urban districts and their surroundings, households were willing to pay to avoid UHI effects with 13.0 dollars to 826.3 dollars for one-degree UHII decrease. This study highlights the urgent need for planners and decision-makers to consider urban expansion, UHI effect, and their economic impact in future urban planning.

Application of Polyaluminium Chloride Coagulant in Urban River Water Treatment Influenced the Microbial Community in River Sediment

Polyaluminium chloride (PAC) has been widely used as a chemical coagulant in water treatment. However, little is known about the impact of PAC performance on the microbial community in sediments. In this study, the archaeal, bacterial, and fungal communities in urban river sediments with and without PAC treatment were investigated. Prokaryotic diversity decreased at the PAC addition site (A2) and increased along with the river flow (from A3 to A4), while eukaryotic diversity was the opposite. The abundance of core microbiota showed a similar trend. For example, the dominant Proteobacteria presented the highest relative abundance in A1 (26.8%) and the lowest in A2 (15.3%), followed by A3 (17.5%) and A4 (23.0%). In contrast, Rozellomycota was more dominant in A2 (56.6%) and A3 (58.1%) than in A1 (6.2%) and A4 (16.3%). Salinity, total dissolved solids, and metal contents were identified as the key physicochemical factors affecting the assembly of core microorganisms. The predicted functions of archaea and fungi were mainly divided into methane cycling and saprotrophic nutrition, respectively, while bacterial function was more diversified. The above findings are helpful to enhance our understanding of microorganism response to PAC and have significance for water treatment within the framework of microecology.

Bringing the vertical dimension into a planar multilevel autoregressive model: A city-level hedonic analysis of homebuyers' utilities and urban river attributes

Throughout history, urban rivers have been regarded as valuable natural elements that satisfy various human needs and affect where people reside. With the increasing expansion of modern cities along the vertical dimension, how urban rivers affect housing values and homebuyers' purchasing decisions in a 3-D context has attracted a significant amount of attention from researchers, environmental practitioners, urban planners, and policymakers. In this paper, we attempt to estimate how homebuyers' utilities are affected by various river attributes and their interactions using the vibrant high-rise apartment housing market in Guangzhou (south China) as a case study. An appropriate 3-D weights matrix is identified using ex ante Monte Carlo simulation combined with ex post validation on the basis of information criteria. By using the identified 3-D spatial weights scheme in a multilevel autoregressive modelling framework, an intricate combination of multidimensional spatial heterogeneity and spatial dependence can be sufficiently accounted for. Our analytical results reveal that river view and riverfront location are considered as negative utilities by Guangzhou's homebuyers, showing the significant negative impacts of river pollution. Yet, the proximity to urban rivers is regarded as a positive utility, revealing that homebuyers enjoy a sense of being close to nature and an emotional bond with traditional water culture. The black-odorous river water itself devalues apartment prices and adds the negative utilities of river view and riverfront location. Riparian greening would command a price premium, as well as mitigate the negative utilities of river view and riverfront location. Although the availability of walking paths and sitting benches along river stretches is generally regarded as a positive utility, it may worsen the negative impact of river view, but enhance the positive impact of river proximity. These results provide deeper managerial insights into how different river attributes influence apartment buyers' utilities and thus help environmental managers (in collaboration with housing developers) design urban river restoration initiatives so as to create pleasant and attractive neighbourhoods for prospective homebuyers.

Investigating the Relationship between Public Satisfaction and Public Environmental Participation during Government Treatment of Urban Malodorous Black River in China

During China’s rapid economic development and urbanization, numerous cases of urban malodorous black river (MBR) have occurred. MBR refers to a polluted urban river that smells bad, is almost black in color, has no aquatic plants or animals, and that consequently causes many social and environmental problems. The Chinese government has sought public participation during the whole process of MBR treatment as part of a comprehensive action plan to improve residents’ satisfaction with their environment. To investigate the influencing factors of public participation and satisfaction, a questionnaire survey was conducted among residential communities close to an MBR. SPSS 22.0 was employed to conduct an analysis of the collected data, using factor analysis, correlation analysis, and linear regression analysis. The results indicate that there is a direct relationship between public satisfaction and the factors of government treatment, public perception and public participation behaviors, such as engagement behavior, supervision behavior, health influence, and compensation measures.

Macro-Impacts of Air Quality on Property Values in China—A Meta-Regression Analysis of the Literature

Air pollution has received increasing attention in recent years, particularly in China, due to the rapid industrialisation that has wrought intense levels of air pollution. A number of studies, therefore, have been devoted to quantifying the impacts of air pollution on property value in China. However, the empirical results are somewhat mixed. This naturally raises questions of whether there is a significant relationship between air quality and housing prices and the plausible reasons for the mixed results in previous studies. This study aims to fill this gap by explaining the variations in the findings by a meta-regression analysis. To control for heterogeneity, a weighted least square model was used to explore the factors influencing the magnitude and significance of the air quality effect based on empirical estimates from 117 observations. This study confirms that air quality does have a discernible impact on housing prices beyond the publication bias. Besides, the types of air quality indicator and the air data source do significantly influence estimates through affecting both the magnitude of the elasticity and the partial correlation coefficient (PCC). Further, the selections of control variables and estimation approaches also have significant impacts on estimates. This study also finds that published papers tend to be biased towards more economically significant estimates. The implications of the findings have also been discussed.

A Structural Analysis for the Categorization of the Negative Externalities of Transport and the Hierarchical Organization of Sustainable Mobility’s Strategies

Transport systems are capable of contributing to the economic robustness of a geographic area and the well-being of its inhabitants via the supply of the necessary assets for the mobility of people and goods. However, transport projects have the capacity to produce several negative externalities such as water pollution, air pollution, barrier effects, noise, and ecological impact, which affect the quality of people’s life. Considering these facts, the main purpose of this study is to indicate methodologically how the negative externalities of transport are interlinked, so that to promote sustainable mobility development. This paper reveals via the method of structural analysis, the interrelations between the negative externalities of transport, firstly to organize them hierarchically and secondly to evaluate the potential of sustainable mobility strategies concerning the co-benefits generated by their implementation for society. The results show that the negative externalities of transport are not isolated phenomena; on the contrary, they are interlinked and can be organised hierarchically according to the relationships between them so that certain public policies can be prioritized and the negative impacts of transport can be tackled more effectively. The most critical negative externalities are the invasion of public space for the construction of more roads, along with road accidents, congestion, and local air pollution. On the other hand, the most important group of strategies for sustainable mobility are the ones oriented to urban design, and more specifically to transit-oriented development.