Greening Schoolyards and Urban Property Values: A Systematic Review of Geospatial and Statistical Evidence

Abstract 1.1 Background Parks and the greening of schoolyards are examples of urban green spaces that have been praised for their environmental, social, and economic benefits in cities all over the world. More studies show that living near green spaces is good for property values. However, there is still disagreement about how strong and consistent these effects are in different cities (Browning et al., 2023; Grunewald et al., 2024; Teo et al., 2023). 1.2 Purpose This systematic review is the first to bring together a lot of geographical and statistical information that links greening schoolyards to higher property prices, as opposed to just green space in general. By focusing on schoolyard-specific interventions, we find complex spatial, economic, and social effects that are often missed in larger studies of green space. 1.3 Methods This review followed the PRISMA guidelines and did a systematic search and review of papers that were published in well-known journals for urban studies, the environment, and real estate. The criteria for inclusion stressed the use of hedonic pricing or spatial econometric models to look at the relationship between urban green space and home values in a quantitative way. Fifteen studies from North America, Europe, and Asia met the requirements for inclusion (Anthamatten et al., 2022; Wen et al., 2019; Li et al., 2019; Mansur & Yusuf, 2022). 1.4 Results Numerous studies have demonstrated that the value of adjacent properties is enhanced by urban green space in a statistically significant manner. The magnitude of the benefit is contingent upon the socio-economic context, the form of green space, and the size of the city (Gao & Asami, 2021; Sajjad et al., 2021; Zhou & Wang, 2021). The emphasis was on spatial heterogeneity and temporal trends, which implies that the distribution of benefits may not be equitable across localities (Kabisch & Haase, 2021; Deng et al., 2022). Various methodologies, including spatial latency models, hedonic pricing, and GIS-based analysis, resulted in disparate results (Norzailawati et al., 2018; Xu et al., 2022). 1.5 Conclusions Some studies show that urban green spaces can raise the value of homes, but how much and how fairly these benefits happen depends on the local situation, the layout of the city, and the city's policies. The review stresses how important it is to have standard measures and long-term studies to help make urban greening projects fair. This research adds to the theory of urban planning by looking at the hedonic value of green infrastructure on a small scale and critically examining the consequences of schoolyard greening on different groups of people. This gives us a new way to think about fair urban expansion.