Forms and Functions of the Real Estate Market of Palermo (Italy). Science and Knowledge in the Cluster Analysis Approach

The analysis of the housing market of a city requires suitable approachesand tools, such as data mining models, to represent its complexity which derives onmany elements, e.g. the type of capital asset-house is a common good and aninvestment good as well, the heterogeneity of the urban areas—each of them hasown historical and representative values and different urban functions—and thevariability of building quality. The housing market of the most densely populatedarea of Palermo (Italy), corresponding to ten districts, is analyzed to verify thedegree of its inner homogeneity and the relations between the quality of thecharacteristics and the price of the properties. Five hundred sets of housing datahave been collected and elaborated by cluster analysis with the aim of describingthe structure of the housing market in each district and developing operational toolsfor the implementation of urban policies and public-private investments.