Property Value, Urban Quality and Maintenance Condition: A Hedonic Analysis in the City of Naples, Italy

The article examines the relationship between property value and level of conservation of public urban space. While many studies have examined the effect of proximity of open space, parks, and trees on property value, there has been few examination of how projects of urban revitalization and ordinary and extraordinary maintenances of public spaces can influence property values. While intuition can suggest that a low level of quality and maintenance of a public space can negatively affect property value, even if the standard requirement of public spaces and services are meet, this yet to be empirically proven.We proposes the application of a new econometric models for quantitative analysis of the characteristics of real estate property (Generalized Additive Model), to assess the impact of maintenance condition on property values, due to the better prevision that these functions can obtain in a real estate market context.The control of the formal and logical adequacy of the proposed theoretical model is referred to the case study under analysis, in the city of Naples. The results obtained show that a well preserved urban environment influences property price by approximately 6%. The experimental test of the model has provided results that, by reason of their formal consistency with the results obtained in other contexts, can be considered representative of the effectiveness of the methodology proposed.