Guest editorial: urban conflict and real estate

Citation

McIlhatton, D., Berry, J. and Chapman, D. (2022), "Guest editorial: urban conflict and real estate", Journal of European Real Estate Research, Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 1-2. https://doi.org/10.1108/JERER-05-2022-067

Significant challenges are continuing to be experienced in urban areas throughout the world as a consequence of crime and other related activities. The impacts of these include loss of life, property damage, the breaking down of societal relations and wider economic losses. However, little attention has been paid towards the specific impact that these phenomena have for European real estate. The purpose of this special issue is to identify the potential impact that issues such as crime can generate for real estate; understand the potential role of real estate in enhancing urban resilience and develop knowledge of what the European real estate community can learn from these events. This special issue of the Journal of European Real Estate will focus on different forms of crime, and how these impact on real estate markets, decision-making and values. Previous research has focused predominantly on crime as an externality in the context of value, but this special issue seeks to go beyond this by developing new insights and methodologies for potential application in a European context.

The first paper in this special issue by DeLisle, Grissom and Never explores the spatiotemporal factors that affect the empirical analysis of crime rates in buffer areas surrounding abandoned properties that have been transferred to a Land Bank, and how these differ among three regimes: before transfer, during Land Bank stewardship and after disposition and whether those differences were associated with differences in relative crime activity in the neighbourhoods in which they were located.

The second paper by Wilhelmsson, Ceccato and Gerell analyses the effect of gun-related violence on housing values, controlling for the area's crime levels and locational factors. Their research highlights that previous studies aimed to find a causal connection between crime and housing values used instrument variables to solve the endogeneity problem. However, this research instead focuses on the fact that shootings have occurred in random time, and space making made it possible to estimate models that create windows around the shooting (event) and help estimate the causal effects of the shootings.

The third paper by Zietz and de Graaff examines the impact of crime on apartment prices for Hamburg, Germany, for the years 2012–2017. In their research, the authors use a panel data with fixed effects estimators and temporal lags to moderate the endogeneity concerns related to crime and considered the effect of total crime, violent and property crime and some sub-categories of crime.

The fourth paper by Taltavull, Berry, McIlhatton, Chapman and Bergonzoli analyses the impact that crime has on real estate values in Los Angeles County, USA. The research approaches the problem by examining different types of crime instead of general crime measures and controlling by spatial dimension of prices and crime as well as endogeneity.

The final paper by Christensen builds on a developing research agenda on the role that real estate has in areas such as counterterrorism, including how counterterrorism is considered in the planning, design and development of real estate in Australia.

In conclusion, this collection of JERER papers contains research that contributes knowledge to a better understand of the triangular effects between property, crime and regulation in the market. The respective impact brings forward new information which adds knowledge to the literature including applied research, which is critical in determining new rules and regulations for controlling crime linked to the need for protection of real estate assets. In this regard, each of the research papers adds knowledge to different aspects of urban conflict, thus addressing the effect of crime control regulations on security and resilience in the management of the built environment. From a complementary perspective, this special issue contributes to the knowledge to support better regulations for improving property wealth in cities based on better security and less crime.