By 2050, nearly 855 square kilometers of regenerable land will be available in Italy, equivalent to 4.1% of the country’s urbanized area, with an estimated economic value generation of more than €1.9 trillion ( Scenari Immobiliari & Unipol , Second National Report on Urban Regeneration). These numbers show that urban regeneration is not a niche policy: It will be one of the largest investment programs in the country for the next thirty years.
Yet, in this very program, one thing continues to be underestimated: the impact on people, communities, and places. In other words, the “S” in ESG—the social aspect many organizations claim to respect, but few are truly able to design, generate, or measure.
The problem: the risk of “S” washing
In the sustainability reports of Europe’s leading real estate investors, the social dimension is becoming more prominent. However, it is often still a broad framework: diversity, employee welfare, stakeholder engagement. All vital elements, but not sufficient to assess whether an urban regeneration project actually enriches the lives of those who live, work, or move in a neighborhood.
The issue is more about operations than it is about story telling. There are no shared tools to select relevant social objectives, integrate them into project design, sustain them over time in the context of asset management, and report on them at the project, portfolio, or fund level. As a result, the “S” risks serving more as a statement of intent than as a strategic commitment. In this sense, the real impact on residents, communities, access to services, and territorial cohesion continues to be a residual variable.
It is precisely to fill this gap that a two-year SDA Bocconi research project was conceived, developed in the framework of a Technical Support Instrument involving the Italian State Property Agency, the Customs and Monopolies Agency, Casa Italia , and Cassa Depositi e Prestiti . The work will culminate in a Paper for Practice outlining recommended practices: a publication targeting public, private, and financial actors involved in urban regeneration, featuring measurement frameworks and partnership models designed to generate social additionality.
Social vs. societal: a necessary distinction
The first conceptual contribution of the research concerns a distinction, one often overlooked in current frameworks, between social value and societal value.
Social value refers to targeted improvements in the quality of life of certain groups, often vulnerable ones: low-income families, older adults who need care, disadvantaged youth, people with disabilities, vulnerable individuals, or those excluded from the labor market. It is a dimension of depth: Delivering social value requires dedicated services, partnerships with third-sector organizations, and longitudinal monitoring.
Societal value, by contrast, refers to broader transformations affecting the economic, social, and cultural structure of a neighborhood or city: social capital, access to services, local economic vitality, the quality of public spaces, perceptions of safety, and cohesion among diverse groups. It is a dimension of scale: Societal value is not population-specific, but generates positive externalities for the entire community.
The distinction does not imply that there is a hierarchy. There is no one impact that is inherently better than any other. It depends on the context, the needs of the area, the mission of the actors involved, and the nature of the asset. However, the distinction is essential from an operational standpoint. A project oriented toward societal value cannot be designed, governed, and evaluated using the same categories as an intervention aimed at the inclusion of vulnerable groups.
The framework: intentional additionality
The research cited above proposes a three-level continuum that helps distinguish between what is simple mitigation, what generates widespread value, and what produces transformative social impact.
The first consists of curbing negative externalities: removing architectural barriers, complying with Do No Significant Harm criteria, preventing noise and air pollution, and ensuring construction-site safety. This is the level of compliance. It does not constitute additional impact per se; instead, it represents the minimum cost of operating responsibly.
The second level involves creating systemic value: green spaces with facilities for recreation and socialization, neighborhood services, community venues, connections to public transportation, and local employment opportunities. This is the level of societal value, which improves living conditions for the entire community and strengthens the urban fabric without necessarily targeting a specific group.
The third level is contributing to transformative solutions: housing for low- and middle-income families, spaces for the inclusion of vulnerable groups, workforce reintegration programs, and mental health services. This is social value in its deepest sense and the most demanding in terms of design, governance, and monitoring.
The through line in all three levels is intentionality. Every regeneration project produces impact in one form or another, as we can clearly see in the redevelopment of abandoned or underused areas, for example. But a project that genuinely seeks to generate value must strive for something beyond a positive side effect: impact must be deliberately pursued, designed, and measured.
Why it pays: impact as a value driver
Urban regeneration is too complex for any single actor to tackle on their own. It requires capital, urban planning expertise, administrative capacity, real estate management, service provision, engagement with local communities, and long-term stewardship. This is why public-private partnerships are central. Such collaboration should be understood not as a financial contract, but as a coalition built around a shared intention to generate collective value. Yet partnerships often remain hollow instruments: the public sector seeks capital and implementation capacity; the private sector invests, builds, and manages following a predominantly commercial rationale; and the “S” remains marginal, often not decisive in selection, compensation, or monitoring mechanisms.
The research advances a different thesis: The social dimension is neither a cost to be minimized nor a reputational characteristic to be disclosed in annual reports. It is the competitive differentiator that distinguishes a project capable of generating lasting value from a simple real estate transaction.
For private operators, the social quality of a project—functional mix, service vitality, quality of shared spaces, and activities capable of building community—can protect the asset’s value over the long term. The point is not simply to lease to the highest bidder, but to engage with stakeholders who help build an ecosystem. For the public sector, the issue is not merely expecting the delivery of infrastructure, but demanding social intentionality: investors must demonstrate that they understand local needs, propose a coherent management model, and commit to verifiable obligations over time. This is the direction taken, for example, by Milan with certain invitations for proposals for Affordable Social Housing. Rather than simply making land available and requiring a certain number of affordable housing units, the city also called for technical and management solutions that could improve residents’ quality of life and enhance social inclusion.
In other words, the partnership envisioned for these projects is a hybrid model. For the public sector, the objective is to maximize collective impact. For private actors, the aim is to ensure economic sustainability and investment returns. Yet these two goals are not necessarily incompatible. Social additionality can become the engine of sustainable profitability: It makes the asset more attractive, reduces the risk of conflict with the local community, shores up the operator’s reputation, and extends the duration of the value generated. All of this must be intentional, measurable, and verified over time, because partnerships are long-term by nature and their success depends on concrete indicators.
From words to tools
The framework developed by SDA Bocconi is based on a systematic literature review of 94 peer-reviewed articles, the analysis of 20 international and 10 national case studies, consultations with sixteen European public real estate agencies, and validation with public and private stakeholders, including the Italian State Property Agency, Cassa Depositi e Prestiti , FS Sistemi Urbani, the City of Milan, the City of Genoa, Coima, and Arup.
The result is a set of operational tools designed to help the actors involved in urban regeneration move from making claims to managing and measuring impact. The framework identifies five measurable elements—social capital and participation, access to services and infrastructure, quality of life, cohesion and equity, and the local economy—along with potential KPIs and monitoring methods for each one.
The framework also includes a matrix of partnership models differentiated according to two variables: the nature of the asset (public or private) and its predominant use (public, social, or commercial). This matrix reveals when the primary lever is regulatory, contractual, or financial, or when the achievement of objectives depends mainly on voluntary mechanisms based on deeper forms of collaborative governance.
The topics covered in the “Housing” Trending Topic are addressed in the executive education programs Partnership pubblico-privato per investimenti e servizi and PPP per investimenti e servizi pubblici , and are studied by SDA Bocconi’s Public Value Lab and Business & Government Lab .
