The aim of this paper was to develop a social sustainability tool to clarify what social sustainability means in land use planning processes. The tool was developed through a robust research process covering a large amount of scientific literature and built environment sustainability assessment tools. To assess how the developed tool works in practice, we used it as a coding system for the assessment of social sustainability in a case study from Finland. The case study includes the master planning process of a medium-sized city and the legal framework guiding it. The theoretical contribution of the paper lies in creating a holistic tool for the assessment of social sustainability in planning processes. This study also provides a strong practical contribution, as it goes beyond theoretical definitions to the pragmatic level by providing exemplary measures to be used in designing and implementing processes. Therefore, this paper is a valuable source for those stakeholders (for example planners, developers and policymakers), who struggle with the issue of the successful implementation of social sustainability practices, and it will help them to benchmark their processes against the themes found in the tool.

The world is undergoing multiple crises that require resilience to withstand them. The built environment can significantly enhance or weaken society’s (and individuals’) resilience. However, understanding of resilience in the built environment is scattered and manifold – whilst the design of buildings primarily focuses on the restoration of buildings’ physical characteristics, urban policies centre on the recovery of society. Scholars highlight the need for a holistic approach where different resilience concepts merge to improve the resilience of people and communities. For this, understanding the relationship between people and places is crucial. Thus, the aim of this paper is to deepen the understanding of the social resilience concept in relation to the built environment and how the built environment can enhance it. This is achieved through an extensive literature review, concept mapping and panel discussion. The built environment characteristics affecting individual and/or community resilience are identified, and a conceptual model is provided, attempting to visualize the relationship between the constructs. The paper’s novelty lies in its multidisciplinary approach and integration of various social science knowledge in the context of the built environment. Furthermore, it emphasizes the built environment’s role in supporting social resilience, which has been often overlooked previously.

The purpose of our study was to investigate the content of sustainability reporting issued by real estate sector. Content analysis was employed to identify the strengths and weaknesses of sustainability information provided by sample companies. The content analysis structure considered both quantity and quality of information simultaneously. Our results show an inconsistency in the form, extent and quality of sustainability reports. In addition, our findings recognise a lack of clear approach to embrace materiality, external assurance, and further engagement of stakeholders in the sample reports. It seems that most of the sample companies were engaged in issuing sustainability reports to fulfil the legislative requirement and avoiding financial or legal risks. Our study provides information on the current status of sustainability reporting to real estate professionals. In addition it contributes in decreasing the financial and legal risks, and increasing the corporate reputational capital, by revealing the common weaknesses prevalent in the sustainability reports.

With continuing urbanisation, real estate (RE) has become increasingly important in crisis management. The field of crisis research is still fragmented, especially in the RE context and focuses on the retrospective analysis of single crisis events. This qualitative, futures studies–based paper aims to build a more holistic, foresight-driven understanding of how diverse crises affect RE. It identifies 128 possible future crises from a societal perspective and adopts a novel method in the field, the Futures Wheel, to collect the views of 179 practicing and academic experts via 58 multidisciplinary workshops to analyse the impacts of the identified crises. From this analysis emerged the Crisis Impact Framework for Real Estate, which includes 23 impact themes that synthesise the variety of direct and indirect crisis impacts on RE’s hard elements (e.g. the physical condition of materials) and soft elements (e.g. economic value changes). This study contributes an integrated and foresight-driven perspective to the existing research literature. The framework can assist RE market participants in preparing and assessing critical elements of RE before, during and after crisis impacts have manifested and can help spatial planners, investors and RE managers to reflect in a more multidimensional manner on their vulnerabilities and crisis preparedness.