Big hospitals and schools actually drive down property values in busy cities, while parks make them skyrocket.
SSRN · March 17, 2026 · 6428144
The Takeaway
While urban planners typically view hospitals and universities as 'amenities' that anchor neighborhood wealth, causal AI modeling of real estate shows they often act as a drag on property prices in high-density cities. This reveals a non-linear reality where the negative externalities of these large institutions, like congestion and noise, outweigh their benefits for local homeowners.
From the abstract
The foundation of a sustainable urban economy relies on a circular value mechanism where the spatial wealth generated by the city is recaptured to finance its own infrastructure. However, current public financing and static land management practices fail to equitably measure and capture the unearned value increment created by infrastructure investments. Because the complex and non-linear nature of urban market dynamics makes it difficult to isolate the causal impact and spatial heterogeneity gen