Skip Navigation



Journal of Economic Geography Advance Access published online on July 8, 2009
Journal of Economic Geography, doi:10.1093/jeg/lbp022
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Florida, R.
Right arrow Articles by Mellander, C.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author (2009). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

There goes the metro: how and why bohemians, artists and gays affect regional housing values

Richard Florida* and Charlotta Mellander**

* Martin Prosperity Institute, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada. email <florida{at}rotman.utoronto.ca>
** Prosperity Institute of Scandinavia, Jönköping International Business School, Sweden. email <charlotta.mellander{at}jibs.se>

JEL classifications: R10, R21, Z13

It is often conjectured that artistic, bohemian and gay populations increase housing values in the neighborhoods and communities in which they reside. But these groups are small, and the evidence of their effect on housing prices is anecdotal and limited. We argue that artists, bohemians and gays affect housing values through two kinds of mechanisms: an aesthetic-amenity premium; and a tolerance or open culture premium. To examine this, we introduce a combined measure of bohemian and gay populations—the Bohemian-Gay Index. We conduct statistical analyses to test the performance of this measure against other variables expected to affect housing values—income, wages, technology and human capital. The findings indicate that the Bohemian-Gay Index has a substantial direct relation with housing values across all permutations of the model and across all region sizes. It remains positive and significant alongside variables for regional income, wages, technology and human capital. The Bohemian-Gay Index also has a substantial direct correlation with other key variables, particularly income, indicating an additional indirect effect on housing values.

Keywords: Housing, human capital, creative class, income, gay, artistic, bohemian
Date submitted: 1 November 2007     Date accepted: 1 April 2009


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.