Redevelopment of industrial heritage: Insights into external effects on house prices

Local policy makers seek ways to deal with abandoned industrial heritage in their jurisdictions. Many are demolished, but in some cases considerable investments are made to preserve the cultural aspects of industrial sites. The renewal plans are usually designed to stimulate urban renewal in the vicinity of these sites. Little seems to be known about the effectiveness of these policies. In this paper, we study whether the redevelopment of 36 industrial heritage sites in The Netherlands caused positive external effects by investigating the development of house prices in nearby residential areas. We use a difference-in-difference design by comparing quality-adjusted house prices in a predefined target and control area before the start, between the start and the completion and after the completion of the redevelopment. We also model the spatial and temporal dimensions of these external effects. We find that these dimensions matter substantially. We find that negative externalities on house prices before the start completely disappear after the start of the redevelopment of industrial heritage sites. We also find evidence for positive and local effects on house prices after the completion, but this result disappears when we remove the projects located in the largest cities.