The Korea Local Administration Review

The importance of urban parks has been well documented during several decades. Green space can create an attractive, healthy, and vibrant places, and improve the quality of life for their citizens. In Korea, many previous studies also show that urban parks are positively connected to housing values that indicate the utilities for green space. However most empirical studies conducted in Seoul or large metropolitan areas. In general, high density cities have not sufficient green areas around the residential areas, so the closed green and open spaces can increase housing values. However, there are lots of green spaces all around the small cities, so we hypothesize whether urban parks close to residential areas still have a positive impact on housing values in small- and medium-sized cities. Additionally, we assume that the impacts of urban parks around the residential area will be different for each high- and low-priced housing. This study applied hedonic price and quantile regression models with 38,097 samples (single-detached housing, 2006-2021) in 36 cities, larger than 50,000 but not Seoul Metropolitan Areas (SMAs), in Korea. The preliminary and key findings are as follows. The closeness to park is significantly and positively associated with housing value, and the effects are similar to previous results in high density cities. The distance to park elasticities of housing prices are about -0.046 and the elasticity of the lowest housing value is about -0.06, but the elasticities gradually decreased as housing price increases. In a city with a high green ratio, the positive effect of proximity to city parks on housing prices is offset by low-priced housing, but reinforced by high-priced housing. Urban park areas are negatively connected to housing value, but it is not statistically significant. Additionally, neighborhood park, children park and small park increases housing values rather than other types of park.