"Is there an association between art and changes in the economic conditions of urban neighbourhoods? While the popular media and policymakers commonly believe this to be the case, quantitative evidence remains lacking. Here, we use metadata of geotagged photographs uploaded to the popular image-sharing platform Flickr to quantify the presence of art in London neighbourhoods. We estimate the presence of art in neighbourhoods by determining the proportion of Flickr photographs which have the word ‘art’ attached. We compare this with the relative gain in residential property prices for each Inner London neighbourhood. We find that neighbourhoods which have a higher proportion of ‘art’ photographs also have greater relative gains in property prices. Our findings demonstrate how online data can be used to quantify aspects of the visual environment at scale and reveal new connections between the visual environment and crucial socio-economic measurements" (1 Seresinhe, Preis, Moat).

This study published by Royal Society Open Science is the first of its kind to apply quantitative evidence to the belief that public art increases property values in urban neighborhoods. Additionally, it demonstrates how online visual platforms both contribute to and inform us about social and economic trends at large. Using geo-tagged photos from Flickr and property prices over time, researchers suggest a direct relationship between Street Art and neighborhood economic growth.