Local Economic Systems and Housing Real Estate Markets in University Towns

This book investigates the relationship between universities, real estate markets, and local economic systems in light of contemporary urban regeneration processes and sustainability challenges. Indeed, university settlements can generate important spillovers and opportunities in their territory, thus becoming decisive development and transformation factors for cities' socio-economic, productive, environmental, and infrastructural components. Furthermore, the increasing student mobility to university towns raises relevant sustainability issues concerning the housing demand stemming from off-site students, which, by strongly impacting the real estate market, can place students' families and low-income residents against important financial barriers. By collecting the papers presented at the SIEV (Italian Society of Appraisal and Valuation) seminar, held in Florence, Italy, in November 2023 within the context of the "Urbanpromo Progetti per il Paese" cultural event, the book delves into understanding and assessing the complexity of the effects generated by investments in university settlements as a fundamental factor for effective urban development policies aimed both at meeting the "right to study" and maximizing impacts from a circular perspective. The proposed reflections, finding their common thread in the use of interpretative models and methodological tools of the appraisal and valuation discipline, are organized into three parts: Part I “Investing in university cities: sustainability and urban regeneration issues”; Part II “University and real estate markets: evaluation issues and models”; Part III “Real estate market and governance in university cities: evidence from case studies”.