Nature plays an important role in the liveability of towns and cities – urban green spaces help to support health and well-being and offer a pleasant living environment for urbanites and a positive climate for businesses. Green spaces in urban areas are also important for biodiversity and the environment, helping to counter flooding and offering a favourable environment for fauna. Yet in practice, green spaces often succumb to competing claims for space. This can have a significant impact on the living environment of people who live and work in those urban areas.
This project looks at the influence of the real estate industry on urban green spaces. The real estate industry can play a key role in a wider transition to a nature-inclusive living environment that offers social, economic and ecological resilience. In this research, we look explicitly for a pro-active green contribution from the industry to the liveability and resilience of urban areas. We do this by developing a transition approach for nature-inclusive enterprise. This approach looks at the real estate industry more widely, including landowners, investors, architects, property owners and project developers.
In this report, we present a framework for the approach, inspired by three scientific theories: the transition theory, the theory of practice and the theory of planned behaviour. We use the transition theory as a means to describe the process of change to practices in the long term. The theory of practice focuses on the actions that are required in order to construct a residential home from construction materials. The theory of planned behaviour helps us to examine factors that influence practices and how actors are influenced by existing practices. A nature-inclusive industry requires broad change, with that change brought about by a rethink of a wide spectrum of common practices. To set such practices in motion, we are looking for points of departure in the considerations being made by different actors in the real estate industry.
The substantive study of scientific literature relating to nature-inclusive construction has ultimately led to the selection and analysis of 86 scientific publications. Although nature is not a dominant topic in real estate literature – rather the literature tends to reference environmental aspects – there is solid scientific attention for the topic. We distinguish here between eight substantive ‘clusters’ that are of importance within the scientific literature:
1. The involvement of real estate parties in urban green spaces
2. The role of green spaces in urban areas and the role of real estate practices
3. The use of space in urban areas and the impact of the real estate industry
4. The world of the project developer: practices, considerations and incentives
5. Investment and financing of green spaces in urban areas
6. Planning and governance: management tools for a green urban environment
7. The perspective of the occupant (user)
8. The integration of green and grey: a search for synergies
In this report, we specify the findings from relevant articles for each of the aforementioned clusters.
Ultimately, the role of green spaces on the current or future grey agenda is an important factor for future biodiversity and nature in urban areas. The question is whether or not the colour of the agenda is likely to change. Attention from literature appears to be increasing somewhat, but typically, ‘green’ in the real estate industry tends to refer primarily to the environment and sustainability. There remain many challenges and barriers to nature-inclusive construction becoming a mainstream practice, but there are solid points of departure in the scientific literature.
In this context, this report offers the basis for conducting a broad survey of real estate parties, for performing an in-depth case analysis of nature-inclusive construction and for providing the industry with an agenda. The aim of this follow-on study is to support better representation of the socioeconomic and ecological values of green areas in the assessment framework of the real estate industry.
Source: Dijkshoorn-Dekker, M., Mattijssen, T., van Haaster-de Winter, M., Kortstee, H., & Polman, N. (2020). De bijdrage van de vastgoedsector aan een natuurinclusieve leefomgeving: Achtergrondrapport. (Rapport / Wageningen Economic Research; No. 2020-01). Wageningen Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.18174/521455