The involvement of real estate owners and the municipality in solving vacancy in inner-cities. Three case studies of medium-sized cities in Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Abstract

Inner-cities are important as being vibrant meeting places, economic centres and offer a wide range of amenities, yet they also face significant challenges. One challenge is vacancy, which has a negative effect on the street and cityscape of the inner-city, while stakeholders want a fun, vital and accessible inner-city. Cooperation between stakeholders in the inner-city is seen as a solution of the current vacancy problem. Therefore, the question that is answered in this research is: “To what extent does cooperation between real estate owners and the municipality have an impact on solving the vacancy problem in the inner-cities of medium-sized cities?” In this study three medium-sized cities in Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands are compared to learn from practices in international context. Real estate owners, municipality employees and other relevant professionals in the inner-city are interviewed about the organisations, strategies, resources and dependencies in the inner-city. What became clear in this research is that working together in an organisation in the inner-city contributes to solving the vacancy problem in the inner-city. Those collaborations ensure sustained investment and strategic alignment which both are crucial for addressing vacancy. Resources do not specifically affect solving vacancy, but the dependency, mainly on the resources of the municipality, associated with it does. This gives the following answer to the main question: effective cooperation between real estate owners and municipalities, characterized by structured financial involvement, active stakeholder engagement and strategic planning plays a critical role in solving vacancy problems and revitalizing inner-cites of medium-sized cities. Suggestions for further research are to examine cities in which cooperation is not yet so obvious. Next to that it would also be interesting to zoom in on the role of the municipality, to find out if and how they feel dependent on real estate owners. Additionally, researching big real estate companies, that don’t have a connection with the particular inner-city, would be interesting as well. Finally, this study gives two policy recommendations, namely that municipalities should encourage initiatives between real estate owners and the municipality and therefore appoint a manager. Next to that, it is advised to set up a strategy of the inner-city and make the processes of permits faster.