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124 The Impact of Open Space and Potential Local Disamenities on Residential Property Values in Berks County, Pennsylvania I. Introduction and Project Objectives Increased attention is being focused throughout the Northeast U.S. on how land use is changing over time. Concerns over urban "sprawl," with its patchy, diffuse pattern of development, include the loads placed on the transportation infrastructure, the costs of delivering local services, the impacts on natural systems, and the effects on the aesthetic and cultural value of the landscape. As residential development occurs in rural areas, traditional as well as more modem and larger -scale agriculture can become located in close proximity to residences, leading in some cases to conflict over land uses and property rights. Local authorities whose responsibility it is to manage and regulate growth and development need information on the relative desirability of alternative land use patterns. Property values provide one way to measure community members' preferences over land use patterns, as revealed through markets. The overall goal of this study was to estimate the impact of neighboring land use on resider$ial property values. Categories of neighboring land uses addressed were open space (versus developed uses) and land uses that may be seen as locally undesirable due to perceived or actual disamenities. The latter category of potential local disamenities included: landfills, airports, mushroom production, large -scale animal production, sewage treatment plants, and high-traffic roads. The above goal was accomplished in two phases. First, a GIS database on land use and residential property values was developed for a county in Southeastern Pennsylvania, a region characterized by highly productive agricultural land but also by continuing development pressure and a rapid rate of farmland loss. In the second phase, an implicit house price function was estimated to explain variation in the sales price of single - family residential properties. Explanatory variables included: structural characteristics of the properties (square feet of living space, lot size, etc.), factors that vary spatially by local government (school district quality, zoning, etc.), measures of proximity to employment centers, measures of surrounding land use, and proximity to potential local disamenities. Based on the estimated implicit house price function, the marginal impacts of surrounding land use and local disamenities on residential property values were calculated. - H. Previous Research Many papers have used implicit pricing models to analyze the effects of open space and/or local disamenities on residential property values. However, results from these papers are mixed due to different kinds of open space considered, specification of the open space variables, and differences across study regions. The study closest to this one in purpose and method is that done by Irwin (2002). In an implicit pricing analysis of residential properties in Maryland, Irwin measures the proportion of area within 400 meters of each house in different land uses. Irwin finds that 1