Analyzing housing prices in Shanghai with open data: Amenity, accessibility and urban structure

Skyrocketing housing prices in China's megacities have generated broad concerns. By integrating open data from Lianjia.com, Dianping.com, Mobike.com, and Baidu Map POI, we analyze spatial patterns of apartment prices and their association with local attributes in Shanghai. We find that Shanghai's residential market still has a monocentric structure because of the centralized distribution of public transport facilities and amenities. Hedonic models further confirm that structural attributes, accessibility, as well as public and private service amenities significantly shape the real estate market. These factors also are differentiated so as to form a pattern of concentric rings. In the inner-city and expanded inner-city areas, public service amenities such as parks, schools, hospitals, and banks, as well as private service amenities such as entertainment, shopping, and residential service facilities, boost housing prices. In the suburbs, better access to bike sharing, bus stops, and metro stations are the top preferences for apartment buyers. Our study also indicates that the Chinese government needs to make public and private services more accessible, not only spatially in urban peripheries and villages, but also institutionally to lower income families who cannot afford apartments in expensive neighborhoods.