Economic impacts of alternative greenspace configurations in fast growing cities: The case of Greater Beijing

Greenspaces at the city scale, like greenbelts, green-wedges or green-grids, have become well-known instruments for shaping urban economic activity and land use. The economic impacts of such instruments are complex and hard to measure. This article addresses one of the rarely studied problems of measuring the economic impacts of alternative greenspace configurations in fast growing cities. In such cities, there is an uncertain basis for making such greenspace related decisions, for example the assumptions about the cities’ total population and economic activity. Decision makers have few tools to measure and predict the potential economic costs and benefits of alternative greenspace configurations. We present a new model that allows tracking over time of both non-divisible land use decisions and a multitude of gradual adaptations made by businesses and consumers. The model is applied to Greater Beijing, one of the fast growing cities that is actively exploring alternative greenspace configurations to control urban expansion. The modelling results suggest that compared with the trend-development scenario of no greenspace intervention, a strict greenbelt would decrease the overall consumer surplus in Beijing by US$3.3 billion, while an adaptive mix of green-wedges and green-grid would increase consumer surplus by US$3.6 billion per year in 2030. The adaptive configuration also reduces car journeys by 11% in Beijing. More generally, modelling results show that a flexible design of strategic greenspaces and careful siting of new development around metro stations within the designated greenspaces could benefit consumers and promote sustainable travel.