Although many studies have examined the effects of regional growth management policies on housing prices, little is known about the impact of neighborhood‐level smart growth strategies on home values in the targeted and nearby communities. The purpose of this article is to measure the impacts of a pair of geographically focused smart growth planning and development efforts on home values in the suburban context. This article examines two initiatives under the Atlanta Regional Commission's Livable Center Initiative (LCI) as examples of smart growth planning. The results show that smart growth developments focused both on a smaller scale town center LCI and on a larger scale activity center LCI have positive effects on housing prices inside the target area. However, their effects on adjacent areas differ, with the larger scale activity center having some positive effects on nearby property values, while the smaller scale effort resulted in lower values in some nearby areas. The results indicate that smart growth development programs may contribute to revitalizing old suburban downtown centers, but that the effects of smaller scale efforts may result in predominantly zero‐sum outcomes, in which higher values within the target area are accompanied by lower values in adjacent areas.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.