Examining the effects of land use zoning on land price with geographically weighted regression

The effects of land use zoning on land price is expected to vary across places within an metropolitan area. To assess the local effect of a land use zone in each place, hedonic equation of land prices is estimated using geographically weighted regression (GWR) that allows estimation of locally varying but spatially continuous parameters. An experiment for Sendai Metropolitan Area (Miyagi, Japan) reveals that the effects of land use zones indeed vary, and in some locations even the more restrictive zone designation raise the price of that land than designated otherwise. Based on the equation, the zone that maximizes the price of land for each location can also be identified. While GWR seem to be a usefull tool in evaluating and designing urban land use planning, the experiment in this paper also reveals that obtaining robust result is difficult, and further research is necessary to specify variables and fuctional fonns for reliable estimates.