The ROI of Murals: How Public Art Increases Property Values in Calgary

The conversation about public art tends to split along a predictable fault line. On one side, advocates speak in terms of beauty, culture, and civic pride, arguments that are sincere but difficult to quantify. On the other, sceptics ask a blunter question: what is the return on investment? It is a fair question, and increasingly, the data provides a compelling answer. Public art, and murals in particular, generate measurable economic returns for the properties, businesses, and districts that host them. In Calgary, where the intersection of urban development and creative placemaking has been unusually active over the past decade, the evidence is both visible and quantifiable.

What the Research Tells Us

The academic literature on public art and property values has grown considerably since the early 2000s. A study of United States cultural districts funded by the National Endowment for the Arts found that property value growth rates were about 8 percent higher in the neighbourhoods hosting them, and almost 10 percent higher once the analysis controlled for each neighbourhood's past trend. The same work found significant effects on income, employment and migration, though the author cautions that this evidence is not generally robust to methods that control for each city's own trajectory.

More recent work looks at murals specifically. A study led by urban design researcher Hyesun Jeong, published in the journal Cities, analysed maps and data on foot traffic, crime and local populations and found that murals are significantly linked to increased pedestrian activity even after accounting for density and demographics, and that mural areas saw faster increases in income, rent and home values between 2010 and 2020. The same research also found that areas with murals tend to have denser housing and higher rates of walking to work.

These are not marginal effects, but neither are they a formula. Higher foot traffic and stronger value growth turn up repeatedly in the research; what any single wall does for any single property depends on the work, the street, and everything else happening in the neighbourhood at the same time. The evidence supports a direction, not a guarantee, and anyone selling you a percentage should be asked where it came from.

Calgary's Evidence: East Village

Calgary's most demonstrative case study is East Village, where CMLC's Art in the Public Realm programme has been a central pillar of the neighbourhood's transformation from a neglected inner-city district to one of Calgary's most sought-after addresses. The shift is visible on the ground. A district that sat largely vacant now carries some of the strongest demand in the inner city, through a decade in which the wider Calgary market moved with the energy sector rather than steadily upward.

It would be reductive to attribute East Village's entire property value trajectory to its public art programme alone. The neighbourhood has benefited from comprehensive infrastructure investment, heritage building restoration, and new residential and commercial construction. What the art did was give the district a character that arrived ahead of the buildings. In our own placemaking work, that character is consistently part of how a district gets described and sold, alongside walkability and transit access.

What is particularly instructive about East Village is the sequencing. Art installations were among the earliest investments in the redevelopment programme, preceding much of the residential construction. The art arrived before the residents, establishing a cultural identity that subsequent marketing could leverage. This sequencing suggests that public art functions not merely as an amenity that increases existing property values, but as a catalyst that shapes market expectations before transactions even begin.

The Beltline Effect

The Beltline, Calgary's densest residential neighbourhood, offers a different kind of evidence. Unlike East Village, which was master-planned as a comprehensive redevelopment, the Beltline's mural programme has evolved organically through a combination of BIA initiatives, BUMP Festival commissions, and individual business investments. The result is a distributed network of murals and street art that has transformed the neighbourhood's commercial corridors without the benefit of centralised planning.

Walk the Beltline on a summer weekend and the pattern is hard to miss: the blocks with prominent murals hold people. Visitors stop, photograph, and stay in a way they do not on the blocks without them, which is the same effect the pedestrian research above describes, playing out at street level for the businesses on either side.

The same pattern shows up in how space gets marketed. Landlords and leasing agents in the area now cite mural proximity as a competitive advantage in their listings, a development that would have seemed improbable even a decade ago.

Developer Perspectives

Calgary's development community has taken notice. Conversations with developers working on mixed-use projects in inner-city Calgary reveal a growing recognition that public art commissions, once treated as regulatory obligations to be fulfilled at minimum effort, are now understood as strategic investments. Commissioned murals and art installations now appear prominently in pre-sale marketing rather than being added once the building is finished.

This shift is partly driven by the demographics of Calgary's urban condo market, which skews toward younger professionals and downsizers who place high value on neighbourhood character and cultural amenity. For this buyer profile, a building's relationship to its surrounding public realm, including the quality of nearby public art, carries real weight in purchase decisions.

It is also driven by competitive necessity. In a market where multiple developers are offering comparable units at comparable price points in comparable locations, differentiation becomes critical. A developer whose project is surrounded by curated public art has a story to tell that transcends square footage and finishing packages. That narrative advantage translates to sales velocity, which translates to reduced carrying costs, which translates to improved project returns.

Tourism and the Broader Economy

The economic impact of murals extends well beyond the property line. Calgary's cultural tourism offer has broadened considerably over the past decade, and street art and mural tours are now part of how the city is presented to visitors. Social media plays an outsized role: when a Calgary mural appears on an influencer's feed, the economic ripple effect can be traced through hotel bookings, restaurant reservations, and retail transactions in the surrounding area.

The BUMP Festival itself has become a destination event, attracting visitors from across western Canada and, increasingly, internationally. BUMP reports over 450 installations to date, and the permanent works among them keep drawing people long after the scaffolding comes down, which is the part of the return no festival budget captures.

For Calgary, a city working actively to diversify its economic identity beyond the energy sector, cultural tourism and creative placemaking represent a meaningful component of that diversification strategy. Murals, with their relatively modest capital requirements and disproportionate visibility, are arguably the most efficient cultural investment a city can make.

Making the Case for Your Property

The data supports a straightforward proposition for Calgary property owners, developers, and business improvement areas: a well-executed mural commission is not an expense. It is an investment, and the returns show up across property value growth, foot traffic, brand identity, and visibility. The research points consistently in one direction, even if no study can promise a figure for a particular wall.

The operative word is quality. The studies that demonstrate positive returns are examining professionally curated, skillfully executed works, not hasty murals painted as an afterthought. The distinction matters enormously. A mediocre mural can actually depress perceived value, signalling neglect rather than investment. The ROI case for murals is simultaneously a case for taking the creative process seriously, engaging professional artists, investing in durable materials, and integrating the work thoughtfully into its architectural and urban context.

For those interested in the psychological and community dimensions of these investments, the returns extend even further into territory that accountants may not measure but that residents feel every day.

If you are considering a mural or public art commission for your property, we would love to hear about it.