Situations Vacant: A Conceptual Framework for Commercial Real Estate Vacancy

Muldoon‐Smith, Kevin; Greenhalgh, Paul

doi:10.15396/eres2017_341

Cited by 3 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 16 publications

(16 reference statements)

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“…What is new, however, is the rate and regularity of obsolescence and vacancy (Armstrong et al, 2021;Muldoon-Smith & Greenhalgh, 2017). Traditionally, a typical office lease would be 20-25 years long with full repairing and insurance obligations placed on the tenant.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Planning Adaptation: Accommodating Complexity in the Built Environment

Muldoon‐Smith

Moreton

2022

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Obsolescence and vacancy are part of the traditional building life cycle, as tenants leave properties and move to new ones. Flux, a period of uncertainty before the establishment of new direction, can be considered part of building DNA. What is new, due to structural disruptions in the way we work, is the rate and regularity of flux, reflected in obsolescence, vacancy, and impermanent use. Covid-19 has instantly accelerated this disruption. Retail failure has increased with even more consumers moving online. While employees have been working from home, rendering the traditional office building in the central business district, at least temporarily, obsolete. This article reflects on the situation by reporting findings from an 18-month research project into the practice of planning adaptation in the English built environment. Original findings based on interviews with a national sample of local authority planners, combined with an institutional analysis of planning practice since the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, suggest that the discipline of planning in England is struggling with the reality of flux. There is a demand for planning to act faster, due to the speed of change in the built environment, and liberal political concerns with planning regulation. This is reflected in relaxations to permitted development rules and building use categories. However, participants also indicate that there is a concurrent need for the planning system to operate in a more measured way, to plan the nuanced complexity of a built environment no longer striated by singular use categories at the local level. This notion of flux suggests a process of perpetual change, turbulence, and volatility. However, our findings suggest that within this process, there is a temporal dialectic between an accelerating rate of change in the built environment and a concomitant need to plan in a careful way to accommodate adaptation. We situate these findings in a novel reading of the complex adaptive systems literature, arguing that planning practice needs to embrace uncertainty, rather than eradicate it, in order to enable built environment adaptation. These findings are significant because they offer a framework for understanding how successful building adaptation can be enabled in England, moving beyond the negativity associated with the adaptation of buildings in recent years. This is achieved by recognizing the complex interactions involved in the adaptation process between respective stakeholders and offering an insight into how respective scales of planning governance can coexist successfully.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Planning Adaptation: Accommodating Complexity in the Built Environment

Muldoon‐Smith

Moreton

2022

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“…Adaptive reuse of all types of buildings and sites has become increasingly important as an urban, architectural, and conservational strategy (Plevoets and Van Cleempoel, 2019). However, few studies have considered the topic of vacancy in urban centers per se, despite several cycles of interest in adaptive reuse to mitigate economic downturns creating supply and demand mismatches in commercial building markets (Remøy, 2010;Muldoon-Smith, 2016;Armstrong et al, 2021). The challenges of managing existing buildings are complex in mature urban environments, particularly when socioeconomic processes are at play in urban development (Muldoon-Smith, 2016).…”

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“…However, few studies have considered the topic of vacancy in urban centers per se, despite several cycles of interest in adaptive reuse to mitigate economic downturns creating supply and demand mismatches in commercial building markets (Remøy, 2010;Muldoon-Smith, 2016;Armstrong et al, 2021). The challenges of managing existing buildings are complex in mature urban environments, particularly when socioeconomic processes are at play in urban development (Muldoon-Smith, 2016). Various concepts and different interpretations come into play, which contributes to the complexity.…”

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“…The vacancy rate is the amount of unoccupied gross lettable floor area expressed as a percentage of the building's, or city's, total gross lettable floor area (PCA, n.d.). Calculations, however, often involve an overly simplistic characterization of space as either "vacant" or "occupied" (Muldoon-Smith, 2016). Similarly, the concept of "adaptive reuse" holds various interpretations.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Studies spanning 30 years, across different countries, have highlighted that while adaptive reuse could help create a vibrant mixed-use urban village, it should not be seen as a panacea to address vacancy (Barlow, 1993;Muldoon-Smith, 2016;Armstrong, 2020). The complexity of "vacancy" along with the benefits pertaining to "adaptive reuse options" should be understood and explored from a context-based approach in order to find plausible, sustainable solutions.…”

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confidence: 99%

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A framework for sustainable adaptive reuse: understanding vacancy and underuse in existing urban buildings

Armstrong

Wilkinson

Cilliers

2023

Front. Sustain. Cities

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Cities have been built on the benefits of density, proximity, and connectivity. However, the recent COVID-19 pandemic, along with continuously evolving communication technologies, has seen an increase in vacancies and underuse of urban buildings, challenging the agglomeration benefits of cities and our understanding of business-as-usual. By reflecting on these continuous changes in our urban environment, we can better understand the dynamics in play, the various user needs, the temporary or permanent nature of these changes, and possible adaptive strategies to navigate our future toward a more sustainable and resilient state. This article, therefore, presents a systematic literature review, using PRISMA, to examine and map how vacancy intersects with adaptive reuse literature. This review examined 43 academic articles and revealed research predominately focusing on whole-building adaptive reuse of completely vacant buildings. This review highlighted that vacancy is mainly assumed in research, and both vacancy and adaptive reuse are insufficiently unpacked. A new adaptive reuse framework is proposed to address the misalignment between the realities of how a vacancy is distributed in building stocks and the focus on whole-building adaptive reuse. The framework is set to inform urban policy development supporting sustainable reuse. This article presents a point of departure to understand how adaptive planning approaches could be applied to enhance broader sustainability and resilience initiatives.

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