Quantifying the Link between Art and Property Prices in Urban Neighbourhoods

R. Soc. open sci. 3: 160146. (2016) DOI/10.1098/rsos.160146

7 Pages Posted: 16 Feb 2017

See all articles by Chanuki Seresinhe

Chanuki Seresinhe

University of Warwick - Warwick Business School

Tobias Preis

Data Science Lab, Behavioural Science, Warwick Business School; The Alan Turing Institute

Helen Susannah Moat

Data Science Lab, Behavioural Science, Warwick Business School; The Alan Turing Institute

Date Written: March 29, 2016

Abstract

Is there an association between art and changes in the economic conditions of urban neighbourhoods? While the popular media and policymakers commonly believe this to be the case, quantitative evidence remains lacking. Here, we use metadata of geotagged photographs uploaded to the popular image-sharing platform Flickr to quantify the presence of art in London neighbourhoods. We estimate the presence of art in neighbourhoods by determining the proportion of Flickr photographs which have the word ‘art’ attached. We compare this with the relative gain in residential property prices for each Inner London neighbourhood. We find that neighbourhoods which have a higher proportion of ‘art’ photographs also have greater relative gains in property prices. Our findings demonstrate how online data can be used to quantify aspects of the visual environment at scale and reveal new connections between the visual environment and crucial socio-economic measurements.

Keywords: Urban Economics, Urban Gentrification, Art, Online Data, Data Science, Computational Social Science

JEL Classification: C21, C31, C53, C55, C59, R12

Suggested Citation

Seresinhe, Chanuki and Preis, Tobias and Moat, Helen Susannah, Quantifying the Link between Art and Property Prices in Urban Neighbourhoods (March 29, 2016). R. Soc. open sci. 3: 160146. (2016) DOI/10.1098/rsos.160146, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2918447

Chanuki Seresinhe

University of Warwick - Warwick Business School ( email )

Coventry CV4 7AL
United Kingdom

Tobias Preis (Contact Author)

Data Science Lab, Behavioural Science, Warwick Business School ( email )

University of Warwick
Coventry, CV4 7AL
United Kingdom

HOME PAGE: http://www.tobiaspreis.com

The Alan Turing Institute ( email )

British Library, 96 Euston Road
96 Euston Road
London, NW12DB
United Kingdom

HOME PAGE: http://https://www.turing.ac.uk/people/researchers/tobias-preis

Helen Susannah Moat

Data Science Lab, Behavioural Science, Warwick Business School ( email )

University of Warwick
Coventry, CV4 7AL
United Kingdom

HOME PAGE: http://www.wbs.ac.uk/about/person/suzy-moat/

The Alan Turing Institute ( email )

British Library 96 Euston Road
96 Euston Road
London, NW12DB
United Kingdom

HOME PAGE: http://www.turing.ac.uk/people/researchers/suzy-moat

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
46
Abstract Views
767
PlumX Metrics