Land price polarization and dispersion in Tokyo: a spatial model approach

Intensifying spatial inequality in housing markets is of great concern for urban planners and policymakers. This study employed a year-on-year analysis using universal kriging to fit the official land price data in Tokyo over the period 1997–2021. By comparing estimated regression coefficients with the estimated spatial variogram parameters, we found evidence of rising spatial polarization and dispersion in land prices of Tokyo. This was confirmed via price differences between western and central Tokyo that are becoming larger with each passing year. The determinants of the land price have different impacts on prices in western and central Tokyo. As for the variogram parameter, the nugget effects of the residuals in spatial models are increasing for the non-central region and decreasing in central Tokyo, which indicates that the degree of spatial dispersion is increasing.