Comparative Analysis of Centrality Measures in Explaining Activity Locations Through Land Value Variability: A Case Study of Porto Alegre, Brazil

This study compares the performance of five spatial centrality measures in explaining urban land value variation in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Land value reflects the level of competition for a specific piece of land and its potential to attract various activities. We analyze three accessibility measures - Closeness Centrality (CC), Eigenvector Centrality, and Preferential Centrality (PC) - and two intermediation measures - Betweenness Centrality (BC) and Freeman-Krafta Centrality (FK). PC and FK are enhanced versions of traditional metrics, incorporating agglomeration factors and distance decay, respectively. Using multi-model, multi-scale spatial regression analysis, we find that the enhanced measures outperform classical ones in explaining land value variation, with accessibility measures, especially PC, being more responsive. At the disaggregated level, intermediation measures exhibit negative correlations with land value, suggesting adverse effects of high-traffic locations. However, at the neighborhood scale, both measure types show positive correlations, indicating that while proximity to major roads enhances accessibility, immediate adjacency may reduce property values due to traffic-related externalities.