Improving Nature-Smart Policies through Innovative Resilient Evaluations

Dear Colleagues,

Production and consumption activities have determined a weakness of the sustainable real estate economy. The main problems are the subordination of public decision-making, which is subjected to pressure from big companies, inefficient appraisal procedures, excessive use of financial leverage in investment projects, the atypical nature of markets, income positions in urban transformations, and the financialization of real estate markets with widespread negative effects. A delicate role in these complex problems is assigned to real estate appraisal activities, called to make value judgments on real estate goods and investment projects, the prices of which are often formed in atypical real estate markets, giving ever greater importance to sustainable development and transformation issues. Furthermore, during recent decades, the overestimation of demographic growth has highlighted the need for urban planning processes restructuring by limiting the area’s building potential, mitigating the loss of place identity with high environmental and cultural value, and preventing uncontrolled land use, also through the valorization and recovery of the existing heritage.

In this context, economic, social, and environmental demands are combined with uncertainties about the near future, relating to economic crises and geopolitical tensions. In the outlined framework, the focus on sustainability issues also has significant relevance in the financial sector: EU Regulation 2019/2088 requires an effort to evaluate the investment risks concerning their ability to promote environmental and social sustainability. In this sense, the European Commission highlights the stress between a short-term approach based on the exclusive profit pursuit and the need for long-term investment aimed at sustainability objectives. This is called an ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) investment rating, oriented to assess the contribution of a financial product and/or a real estate project's contribution to improving environmental, social, and governance quality.

The Special Issue is dedicated, but not only limited, to developing and disseminating knowledge and innovations related to the most recent real estate evaluation methodologies applied in the fields of architecture and civil, building, and environmental and territorial engineering. Suitable works include studies on econometric models, sustainable building management, building costs, risk management and real estate appraisal, mass appraisal methods applied to real estate properties, urban and land economics, transport economics, the application of economics and financial techniques to real estate markets, the economic valuation of real estate investment projects, the economic effects of building transformations or projects on the environment, and sustainable real estate, the analysis of the effects of COVID-19 and/or economic crises and/or geopolitical tensions on real estate markets dynamics and the hit on the resilient cities development processes.

Prof. Dr. Pierfrancesco De Paola
Prof. Dr. Francesco Tajani
Prof. Dr. Francesco Sica
Topic Editors