Impact of green spaces on the Viennese housing market

Urban greening is becoming a popular policy response in preparing cities for global environmental challenges linked to climate change and biodiversity loss. Concurrently, concerns about the trade-offs of using urban areas for urban greening have risen. A growing number of studies link urban greening initiatives to rising housing costs and displacement in surrounding neighbourhoods. So far, only a small part of the literature discusses how to prevent unwanted consequences of urban greening (such as green gentrification), focusing on utilising housing policy. In our study, we examine the impact of urban green spaces on rents in Vienna, Austria and the potential of housing policies in the development of rent prices. We show that in Vienna, urban greening only has a small influence on rents, in comparison to flat characteristics and rent control. In our case study with a predominantly rental market, private rents are mainly influenced by the location of the accommodations, their state of renewal and the applicability of rent control. Further, the impact of green spaces is concentrated in the green belt in neighbourhoods with a low share of rent control. All this indicates that in Vienna, urban green has only limited potential to increase rents to the extent that it leads to displacement. The mitigating effect of rent control on the rents of the affected apartments in Vienna far exceeds the rent-increasing effect of urban greenery, raising questions about the possibility of utilising rent control as a mechanism in policy making.