Land Value under Growth Control in King County

Abstract

As a hot topic in the field of urban planning, whether growth control is an effective planning tool overall and its potential impacts on land value have been discussed by a lot of literature, yet many of the studies reached quite different conclusions. The purpose of this thesis is to assess the price effect of the urban growth boundary by examining whether land values inside and outside the urban growth boundary in King County showed different trends after the presence of UGB. Using a time series pretest-posttest design, a multiple regression model is built, in which dummy variables are used to represent years before and after the adoption of UGB. The model uses all the valid vacant residential land transactions which took place over a twenty-year period in King County. Controlling for other variables representing the physical attributes and locational factors of the parcels, the findings indicate that land values inside the urban growth boundary in King County increased at a higher rate than those outside the boundary after the UGB was drawn, suggesting a price effect from the UGB in King County. Policy makers are recommended to pay close attention to the trends of land prices inside and outside the boundary in order to take prompt measures when signs of major divergence appear.