PROGRESS IN GEOGRAPHY ›› 2022, Vol. 41 ›› Issue (4): 609-620.doi: 10.18306/dlkxjz.2022.04.006

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Influence of school districts on housing prices and the effect on socio-spatial restructuring: Taking Wuchang District of Wuhan City as a case

GAO Zhe1,2(), QIU Jiayi2, YU Jiayi2, ZHU Yuanyuan1,2,*()   

  1. 1. Hubei Provincial Key Laboratory for Geographical Process Analysis & Simulation, Central China Normal University, Wuhan 430079, China
    2. College of Urban & Environmental Sciences, Central China Normal University, Wuhan 430079, China
  • Received:2021-08-05 Revised:2021-10-07 Online:2022-04-28 Published:2022-06-28
  • Contact: ZHU Yuanyuan E-mail:gaozhe@ccnu.edu.cn;zhuyy990@ccnu.edu.cn
  • Supported by:
    National Natural Science Foundation of China(42001188);National Natural Science Foundation of China(42071170);Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province(2020CFB350);Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities(CCNU20QN031)

Abstract:

Since the Ministry of Education of China issued a series of documents requiring the implementation of the policy of nearby enrollment without entrance exam in 2014 and 2015, the enrollment qualifications of public primary and secondary schools have been linked to housing property. In this context, it is of significant value to explore how the primary and secondary school education resources affect housing prices and how the resulting urban socio-spatial restructuring takes place. Based on the data from open platforms of Anjuke, Lianjia, and Baidu and survey questionnaire and interview data, this study took Wuchang District of Wuhan City as the case area to explore the real influence of school districts on housing prices through adopting the hedonic price model, geographically weighted regression (GWR) model, and other technical methods. Moreover, starting with the concept of "production of space", this study explored the effect of school districts on urban socio-spatial restructuring. The results show that: 1) The impact of the characteristics of school districts on housing prices has exceeded the traditional housing characteristics, such as location, architecture, and neighborhood. 2) Housing within the high school district provides a convenient path for capital inflow from secondary to tertiary circuits, forming a macro basis for the production of school districts as well as a new stratification of social space. 3) At the micro scale, the competition for high-quality school districts has produced "people of school districts" and "space of school districts", and then enclaves of school districts have emerged, which has an impact on the traditional urban social space. 4) Unlike the "danwei (workplace) people" and "community people", the definition of "people of school districts" does not mainly rely on occupational or income divisions, but is associated with families of similar life cycles.

Key words: school district, housing price, socio-spatial restructuring, production of space, circuits of capital, Wuchang District of Wuhan City