In this paper we examine empirically the market for local amenities in the Paris metropolitan region.We find first that there is considerable inequality in the spatial distribution of these local amenities,including accessibility, environmental and social indicators. We use a spatial representation and Lorenzcurves to examine the degree of inequality in these amenities, and this provides evidence that someamenities (or disamenities) are much more inequitably distributed than others. The most extremelyunequally distributed amenities are noise (due to its concentration near airports), “Redevelopment Areas”,presence of water (lakes and rivers) and forests, and presence of train and subway stations. Someindicators, such as the “Poulit accessibility” measure, were by contrast remarkably constant over theregion. We recognize that local amenities should be capitalized into the housing market, and explore thewillingness to pay of households for these amenities within the Paris region using alternativespecifications of a location choice model. One of the core questions we examine is the spatial scale of theamenity effects and how this is captured in a location choice context. By estimating models at both acommune and at a grid cell level, we obtain new insights into how households in the Paris region trade offamenities against each other and against housing cost. We find that the residential location choice modelfits the data moderately better at the smaller scale of the grid cell compared to the commune.
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