Two new reports by TRG researchers, led by John Adams of the Department of Geography, examine various aspects of Twin Cities regional dynamics.

House Price Changes and Capital Shifts in Real Estate Values in Twin Cities-Area Housing Submarkets looks at how land use, community development, and transportation are linked in the Twin Cities metropolitan area.

Authors Adams, Julie Cidell, Laura J. Smith, and Barbara VanDrasek say this research will be useful in understanding how transportation-related options might be used in the Twin Cities region to accommodate growth and the demand for travel while holding down the costs of transportation and maximizing its benefits.

The report explores the movement of average prices and price changes for single-unit houses between 1970 and 1995 in three housing submarkets radiating outward from downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul. In addition, the report illustrates one way of measuring gains and losses in housing values that might be traced in part to the development processes in the metro area.

The findings suggest that generally house prices for newer and more desirable owner-occupied units in the outer tracts of a submarket advance at rates exceeding inflation, and house prices in the inner tracts advance at rates below inflation. There are, however, some deviations from time to time and from tract to tract, suggesting that several forces and events have affected the operation of the sample submarkets and have brought about general shifts in real estate values outward over the study period. These forces and events include extreme variations in the rates of house price inflation as energy prices and consumer prices in general rose after 1970; general economic conditions, including major recessions in the early 1980s and the early 1990s; significant immigration from Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa into Minneapolis/St. Paul since 1970; and perceptions about crime and public safety in the central cities versus the suburbs.

Highway Improvements and Land Development Patterns in the Greater Twin Cities Area, 1970-1997: Measuring the Connections, also by Adams, Smith, Cidell, and VanDrasek, attempts to address some of the many questions generated by ongoing land development and rapid population growth in the Twin Cities. Those include: How are improvements in highway transportation and patterns of land development in suburban and exurban areas associated? Do road improvements encourage land development, or is it the other way around? Do cause-effect relationships that link the two remain constant through the decades, or have they changed over the last 30 years?

Using information on highway improvements and land development throughout 24 Minnesota and Wisconsin counties over three decades, the report examines the link between transportation and four types of land development: residential, industrial, commercial, and office. Correlations between the timing of land development and the timing of transportation improvements for each of the four development types were also studied, as were the processes in which development seems to follow, as well as lead, highway transportation improvements.

The report's findings suggest that the impact of major highway improvements on land development patterns took one form in the 1970s, another in the 1980s, and still other forms in the 1990s. For example, correlations between highways and highway improvements serving a particular area and commercial construction were highest for the 1980s. Study findings also illustrate how lead-lag relationships differ by development type. Transportation infrastructure, for instance, appears to lead office development slightly more than the reverse, an opposite finding than that for commercial development.