Environmental quality perceptions of urban commercial real estate

The aim of the paper is to investigate locational attributes of commercial real estate which are defined in terms of a collection of qualitative appreciations by office users in the Geneva region in Switzerland. The empirical analysis of these environmental quality appreciations was carried out using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) methodology with data from a questionnaire which was sent to 1,800 users of commercial real estate. The users belong to seven professional categories, thus making it possible to examine inter-professional differences between the appreciations. Seven criteria, all quantifiable in the framework of a geographic information system, are used to evaluate the quality of the urban environment through a process of pairwise comparisons. Some general preferences concerning four pre-defined geographic areas are also examined in the perspective of a possible further analysis based on geographic information systems. Although the value spread of the quality perceptions appears to be rather wide, it is still possible to identify with confidence a few dominant criteria for the choice of particular office locations.