Social Production of Desirable Space: An Exploration of the Practice and Role of Property Agents in the UK Commercial Property Market

Abstract

Contexts`M any commentators seem to assume that the language of the environment and the market are mutually opposed. However, green buildings can offer many potential commercial benefits .... Much depends upon how the`market' is constructed by the changing priorities of real estate actors. Critically here, market assessment is often a retrospective affair .... Real estate agents are central to this process of market reconstruction.'' Guy (2002, pages 256^257)`I n this way research into energy efficiency finds itself on what Callon has termed a new terrain: that of society in the making' (1987, page 83). This refocuses analysis away from pure energy questions to a wider set of debates about design conventions, investment analysis, development costs, space utilisation, and market value.'' Guy (2006, page 651) In this paper we explore the role and practices of property agents in the commercial property market and in particular the way agency articulates with the low-carbon buildings agenda. We use agency as a window on a larger process which we refer to as the social production of (un)sustainable buildings, a phrase that is intended to capture the fact that a large number of different actors together produce the built environment and the carbon dioxide (CO 2) emissions associated with its use. There can be no doubt about the importance of building-related energy consumption in the context of climate change mitigation. According to recent research for the fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report, the building sector represents the largest cost-effective potential among all the sectors reported by the IPCC (U ë rge-Vorsatz and Novikova, 2008). However as efforts made

Energy-related standards and UK speculative office development

“…. Achieving normative and cultural-cognitive legitimacy in the market (Scott, 2008) by providing a 'quality' building: defined through aesthetic, symbolic and taken-for-granted features in a 'social production of desirable space' (Schiellerup & Gwilliam, 2009). …”

“…In short, the paucity of low-energy offices is taken to be an example of market correction failure. The correctives prescribed are better pricing and valuing, and establishing a premium for energy-efficient buildings; in the UK, primarily through using BREEAM as an indication of 'greenness' (Bordass, 2000;Schiellerup & Gwilliam, 2009). EPC ratings were also intended to fulfil a similar function as they: allow a differentiation in the market in terms of the energy performance of buildings … address an information market failure and therefore permit … the integration of energy performance into the market for buildings.…”

“…(Biggart & Lutzenhiser, 2007). Such an historical, context-specific understanding of different actors co-constructing offices as 'desirable space' (Schiellerup & Gwilliam, 2009) helps explain how key 'standards' such as Part L building regulations, EPCs, BCO guidance and BREEAM are used to translate, assume, anticipate and, thus, institutionalize understandings of user 'needs' whose satisfaction perpetuates conservative networks of design (Guy, 2002). In speculative modes of development these understandings become particularly powerful in producing homogeneous designs stressing marketability, flexibility, performance and quality, which together characterize desirable office space.…”

“…BREEAM is a credits-based voluntary certification scheme of broad 'sustainability' rather than energy performance, with 'Energy' being one category of nine in which buildings can score assessment credits. However, since its inception in 1990 it has been used successfully to convey 'green' value on buildings (Schiellerup & Gwilliam, 2009). Arising from a, now fully privatized, quasi-autonomous non-governmental organization, the Buildings Research Establishment, its use has successfully internationalized from the UK to the world (Cole & Valdebenito, 2013).…”

What is meant by adaptability in buildings?

“…Their research suggested that commercial property agents had a very narrow interpretation of adaptability, relating primarily to the flexibility of internal spaces, and that other forms of adaptability, such as the capacity to accommodate changes of use, were not factored into valuations (appraisals). This finding is important because, as Schiellerup and Gwilliam (2009) …”