Formation of High Speed Railway Network and Urban House Price in China : An Accessibility-Based Perspective

High speed railway (HSR) services sharply improve the accessibility among cities and induce the reformation of intracity economic activities. Using Social Network Analysis (SNA) approach to obtain the HSR network accessibility measures for Chinese cities, including point degree, closeness centrality and average travel time, we construct econometric models to estimate the changes in average urban house price(HP) and HSR accessibility improvement, spatial equity, as well as the distribution effects across various hierarchies of cities, regions and types of premises. We have two main findings: 1) Generally, HSR accessibility improvement has a significant effect on increasing average urban house prices, and on average for a Chinese city, one HSR line more will lead to an increase in HP by 10.9% and one minute less of average travel time will lead to a rise in HP by 0.17% during our research period. 2) Economic convergence effects were observed cross regions, city hierarchies, while the gap between HSR cities and non-HSR cities widened in China. The real estate markets of some central cities and small cities in underdeveloped regions have been stimulated, and residential as well as office premises are the biggest beneficiaries