What Happened to the CBD-Distance Gradient?: Land Values in a Policentric City

Abstract

Hedonic regression methods are used to assess the impact of dwelling and structure characteristics, neighborhood effects, and multiple locations on a sample of almost 11000 residential property sales in Los Angeles County in 1980. Correction for the dwelling characteristic permits the analysis to be interpreted in terms of land values rather than property values per unit area. The selected equation explains more than 93% of the variation in the dependent variable (house price per unit of lot area). All the independent variables (five property or transaction characteristics, four neighborhood effects, and ten locational nodes) are statistically significant, with one major exception: distance from the CBD, which has a very low /-value and an unexpected sign. This result should be considered in the context of many superficial references, based largely on visual symbols such as new office buildings, to a revival of downtown Los Angeles. The authors interpret the finding that eight subcenters have a statistically significant influence on metropolitan residential land values in Los Angeles as yet another indication of the demise of the monocentric model and the need to discuss VS metropolitan areas in policentric terms.