Green space progress or paradox: identifying green space associated gentrification in Beijing

While green space provides multiple benefits for urban residents, it may trigger gentrification in neighboring areas by raising housing prices and attracting more high-end real estate developments. Gentrification potentially forces marginalized people who can no longer afford to live in such areas to move out. Using Beijing as a case study, this study aims to identify whether extensive park construction in the past decade has resulted in gentrification. If such a trend is observed, the “green progress” aiming to benefit more marginalized residents ultimately serves advantaged groups who constitute a small spectrum of the total population—a paradoxical result. Relying on multiple open-source data and a hedonic pricing model with a difference-in-difference indicator, our estimation results confirmed the “green spaces paradox” in Beijing that adding new parks can trigger gentrification by increasing nearby housing prices. However, the capitalization scale of parks varies based on different factors, thus causing divergent gentrification outcomes. Our results showed that park affected the closest housing price at the highest magnitude, but this impact was not proportional to distance. Natural parks posed insignificant effects on housing prices at the closest distance, but comprehensive parks showed a positive sign. The pre/post opening of parks caused higher impacts on housing prices than the immediate opening, while the nearby disamenity of a park discounted the premium effect. The results can be a reference to gauge potential gentrification outcomes from parks based on which decision-makers and planners can propose inclusive urban greening policies or planning schemes.