Turin Automatic Metro Line: Effects on Real Estate Market and on Commerce

Construction of Turin's Automatic Metro Line is part of the programme for improving the public transport system in the town's metropolitan area. In addition to railway connection with Caselle Airport opened in April 2001, the plan includes completion by 2010 of the Railway Junction and the metropolitan railway system, the new Porta Susa Station due to become the town's main inter-exchange node, extension and development of public transport with completion of important tram axes and development of the traffic control system, integrated into the overall transportation system. Line 1 of the Turin's Automatic Metro will cover the Rivoli- Collegno-Porta Nuova-Lingotto-Nichelino route (one of the most important axes of metropolitan transport). Works carried out in 2002 at first on the Collegno-Porta Nuova leg (first functional segment) and subsequently the Porta Nuova-Lingotto leg (second functional segment or southern extension) works on which should commence in 2005. The first leg (Fermi Station, located in Collegno municipality, to Porta Susa Station) will be operational by end 2005, in time for the 2006 Winter Olympic Games. This paper presents the first results of a project that is carrying out an in-depth study of effects of subway construction on commerce and on real estate market, both in terms of valuation of real estate value increment and of definition, about commerce, of some trends that should develop in Turin in the next years. At first, we needed to characterize the Automatic Metro Line's areas of influence, disaggregating the City of Turin into statistical zones: the restricted area consists of placed on lay-out of Automatic Metro Line or close to the stations zones; the extended area, consists of distant zones that, however, will be certainly influenced by the Metro. On these areas of influence we have carried out a cluster analysis in order to characterize the social-economic context; it will be used as reference point to estimate, on the second phase of the study, changes induced by the new infrastructure. In the future, commerce (aggregate of stores and shops and open-air market places) will probably have the greatest changes: in general a weakening of the farthest stores and shops and a strenghtening of those nearest. At last, we have analysed the induced changes on real estate market: comparing the City's average with every increase in value of the districts interested by the subway, we have calculated some introductory remarks on differential increase of real estate price in each zone. The results confirm, as expected, that the Automatic Metro Line's areas of influence show an higher increase in value than the average of Turin.