To rehabilitate or redevelop? A study of the decision criteria for urban regeneration projects

Abstract

PurposeTo develop a multi‐criteria decision‐making framework for evaluating different schemes of urban regeneration project.Design/methodology/approachUrban decay in Hong Kong has long warranted community concern. To tackle the problem, there are generally two different approaches, namely building rehabilitation and redevelopment. In the past, urban regeneration was dominated by complete redevelopment. However, with the rise of the concept of sustainability, the choice of building rehabilitation is becoming increasingly popular. Nevertheless, with either option, difficulties are often encountered in balancing the diverse interests of the stakeholders, who have varied aims and ambitions for the achievements of a project. Therefore, we have developed a framework, which contains the factors to be considered when planning an urban renewal project. To obtain the relative importance of these factors in a reliable but reasonably inexpensive manner from the building‐related professionals, the Non‐structural Fuzzy Decision Support System was employed. In total, 34 building surveyors and 31 town planners were interviewed using structured questionnaires.FindingsThe set of perceived weightings of the decision criteria obtained from building surveyors was quite different from that from town planners. People of different backgrounds hold divergent views towards the relative importance of the decision criteria in an urban regeneration project.Research limitations/implicationsDue to the resource limitations, individuals from the professions of building surveying and town planning were studied only.Practical implicationsTo achieve a credible decision‐making process, it is therefore advisable to have a balanced mix of members in any urban regeneration project decision making panel. Also, the framework developed in this study can be used to facilitate the decision making process in the future project.Originality/valueThis paper is the first attempt to explore the relative importance of various criteria for the decision‐making process in urban regeneration projects perceived by different professionals.

Economising subsidies for green housing features: A stated preference approach

“…non-structural fuzzy decision support system, v nadaljevanju: NSFDSS) primerjali pripravljenost anketirancev za plačilo različnih lastnosti zelenih stanovanj. Ta tehnika se množično uporablja za določanje faktorskih uteži pri večkriterijskem odločanju (Yau in Chan, 2008;Fung in Yau, 2009;Yau, 2012), uporabna pa je tudi za razvrščanje različnih lastnosti zelenih stanovanj glede na PZP anketirancev. Potek dela z NSFDSS, kot je prikazan na sliki 4, smo povzeli po Tam idr.…”

Stakeholders’ Expectations in Urban Renewal Projects in China: A Key Step towards Sustainability

“…In terms of redevelopment, it is a direct way to root out the dilapidated buildings and neighborhoods and to rebuild new ones that can meet the quality and functional demands [57]. From an economic perspective, it creates the investment value and rearranges the urban land [55]. A large-scale redevelopment may produce a mass of construction and demolition waste and break the social network built in the existing neighborhoods [42,58].…”

“…Technically, there is a widely-accepted consensus that redevelopment and rehabilitation change the urban areas in different ways [13,55]. In most urban-renewal-related policies in China, these two types are mentioned together and share a similar decision making process [82][83][84].…”

“…In spite of much work that has been done to improve social sustainability, many unsatisfied scenarios have arisen as a result of in-situ residents, decision makers, the general public, etc., due to the social conflicts in urban renewal [54][55][56]. Without the satisfaction of major stakeholder groups, social sustainability cannot be achieved.…”

An Integrated ANP Modle for Decision-making of Urban Regeneration Projects

“…Several MCDA methods were successfully applied to urban regeneration purposes assessing their impacts on the built and natural environment and the institutional and socio-economical context. But there is still room for improvement, such as, the factors should be independent in an AHP model [5] which is not consistent with real situation; and NSFDSS [6] can't provide a structure to analysis the interrelations of the criteria/factors in the model.…”