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Social Value of the Built Environment
How is social value created, defined and measured in both placemaking (urban design, architecture and real estate) and construction (procurement and labour) processes?
Social value has an important role to play in the delivery of the SDGs. A rebalancing of value to include social and environmental value, as well as economic and commercial value, is needed to ensure the shaping of communities and places will have wellbeing outcomes. This special issue explores current and potential approaches to defining, delivering, monitoring and evaluating social value in the built environment, its benefits and consequences and its relation to other existing policy mechanisms.
Guest editors: Flora Samuel and Kelly Watson
The concept of social value has gained significant prominence in recent years in some countries, yet remains misunderstood. There is a recognised need for it to be better defined, interpreted and embedded in planning, design and operation. This will entail measurement and assessment. Social value is increasingly being considered alongside issues of quality of life and wellbeing, to both the individual and the community, but it remains challenging to reconcile social value in a meaningful way with the present value management approaches that dominate the construction and real estate industries.
This special issue brings together a series of contributions to current thinking and critical discussion on social value, including empirical research from across the UK, Europe and Australia. How can planners, clients, designers create and evaluate social value at different scales? How can local stakeholders (communities) be involved and empowered? How can the intended outcomes be assured? Collectively, the papers in this special issue point to new practices for the planning, design, construction and operation of projects. A series of gaps are also identified in social value research, most notably a discussion of social value in the context of real estate, valuation and 'environmental, social and corporate governance' (ESG).
Table of contents
Social value of the built environment [editorial]
F. Samuel & K. Watson
Politics of social value in the
built environment
M.S. Çıdık
Added
value and numerical measurement of social value: a critical enquiry
A. Raiden & A. King
Improving social value through
facilities management: Swedish housing companies
D. Troje
Assessing social value in housing
design: contributions of the capability approach
J.-C. Dissart & L. Ricaurte
Wellbeing fostered by design: a
framework for evaluating indoor environment performance
J. Croffi, D. Kroll, V. Soebarto,
H. Barrie & K. McDougall
The social value of public spaces
in mixed-use high-rise buildings
H. Barrie, K. McDougall, K. Miller
& D. Faulkner
Social values and social
infrastructures: a multi-perspective approach to place
A. Legeby & C. Pech
Assessing the social values of
historic shopping arcades: building biographies
A. Skoura & A. Madden
Feedback on the special issue
Social value: an architect's perspectiveEdward Ng
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