While urban development is essential to keep our cities alive, existing buildings and structures are essential for communities to thrive. Moreover, this development needs to minimise construction waste and pollution, which means that it is illogical to demolish existing buildings that contain valuable resources. However, transformation is often more expensive than new construction. Additionally, in academic literature a hiatus exists regarding the social side of
sustainable development. Therefore, this research sheds light on the effectivity and costs of social sustainable measures in architecture to facilitate their implementation by answering the following research question: “How is social sustainability included in the practice of adaptive reuse architecture and how does it impact the costs?“
The results show several social sustainability benefits regarding adaptive reuse. However, the results confirm a hesitance amongst practitioners regarding its execution as well, thanks to unpredictable costs and a lack of expertise. Therefore, evidence suggests reducing uncertainty, by means of minimising change in favour of social sustainability. In turn, social sustainability and adaptive reuse issue several economic benefits that promote their further integration in development of the built environment, but are in need of further research.