Beyond Proximity : Is Easy Accessibility to Urban Parks Always Good?

This paper provides new evidence on the depreciation effect of easy access (EA) to urban parks on housing prices. Using an improved geographical boundary discontinuity design, we separate the costs of EA from the combined effects of proximity to urban parks. On average, houses with EA to urban parks face a depreciation effect of 4.1% of their value, or approximately $16,577 for each house. This depreciation of EA houses has a long-term decreasing trend. Novel cellphone data provide further evidence that there are a large number of visits to areas with EA to urban parks, resulting in disamenities and thus depreciation effects on the EA houses