The social added value of public cultural real estate

Abstract

Public cultural real estate is a type of real estate that is publicly accessible that beholds a (mix of) cultural function(s) such as libraries and cultural centres. Besides their primary function, e.g. lending books in the case of a library, they can also have the objective to behold an additional social function. Multiple cases in the Netherlands have stated explicitly that they want to facilitate social encounters between individuals within their project. Social encounters can be characterised as a social added value and can have multiple positive benefits such as building social capital. Public real estate can be classified as a third place, possessing the necessary conditions to generate this social added value. However, a knowledge gap exists regarding how this objective can be effectively integrated into the development process.
This research investigates how the development process of public cultural real estate contributes to its social added value. To address this research, a comprehensive literature study was conducted, focusing on themes such as social added value, social encounters, and the development process. Additionally, empirical research was undertaken through two case studies involving project document analysis, semi-structured interviews, and expert interviews.
The main findings of this research are that the development process can contribute to the social added value in different ways, depending on the design of the development process and the different involvement of the actors. The development process consists of four phases. The first two phases of initiative and development, are the most influential and behold the potential to define the objective of social encounters as a social added value and the implementation within the project itself. The actor involvement in the development process can be structured in multiple ways. The contribution to the social added value is related to which extent actors are actively involved and from which moment on, and how actively steering they are on the objective of social encounters as a social added value.