Spatial planning seeks to regulate demand for land resources with a view to securing the well-being of urban and rural communities. It identifies the decisions that should be made in light of a preferred future development. Yet, preferences for future development change as demands for housing,...

Planning frequently fails to include the valuation of public goods, such as scenic beauty. This can lead to negative economic impacts for a region over the longer term. Especially in mountainous regions such as the Alps in central Europe, which depend on tourist income, the change of landscape...

Forests provide a variety of ecosystem goods and services to society, which often have the typical characteristics of a public good: non-excludability and non-rivalry. One of these services is avalanche protection of forests. A monetary valuation of this service would be helpful to provide...

Forests provide a variety of ecosystem goods and services to society, which often have the typical characteristics of a public good: non-excludability and non-rivalry. One of these services is avalanche protection of forests. A monetary valuation of this service would be helpful to provide...

Hedonic house-price models have long been used in urban studies to investigate important factors characterizing cities (eg, the demand for amenities or housing submarkets). Traditionally, the formulation of hedonic models has been solved using global spatial econometric techniques. The...

Enhancing the urban quality of life (QoL) is an explicit policy goal of many countries, yet it is rarely studied using models that relate objective measures of the urban environment to the subjective evaluations of residents. It thus often remains unclear how planning interventions in the urban...