Stigma zoning: a new study aims to quantify the cumulative negative effect on home values caused by undesirable neighborhood features such as landfills and airports.(What Hurts Housing Values?)(Brief Article)

ACCORDING TO RESEARCHER STEPHEN F. THODE, the impact of locally undesirable land uses, or LULUs, is poorly understood. Liability for depressed housing values, he says, often lean too heavily on a single bad factor, when many sites should share the blame.

Thode, director of the Murray H. Goodman Center for Real Estate Studies at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., suggests an alternative system of "clustering" industrial features into something called a "stigma zone" to assess their impact on local housing.

"I really start with what you can see, smell, or hear." says Thode. "In measuring how much impact something has, you have to look first at what is the …