Stimulating Value Creation in the Initial Phase of Urban Developments

City planners, project developers, architects and many other players initiate urban developments when certain sub-developments, within that area, trigger a ‘need’ to intervene. The various players involved are consequently analyzing the power structures of key stakeholders in the environment, and thus analyzing the opportunities for development. All actions, or sometimes still only creations in one’s head, usually lead to the initial steps of an urban development project. However, the early decisions made are based on ill-defined problems and weak, intangible goals. Participants are confronted with messy and unstructured criteria for decision-making; goals may conflict and are highly subjective, so directing such initial decision-making is a delicate process. In an attempt to manage these conflicting interests, urban development practices increasingly integrate human values in designing objectives. So based on literature and contemporary Dutch urban development practices we assume that the goal of urban development is value creation. Value for all stakeholders as well as value for the geographical area subjected to various interventions. This led to the following research question: How can value creation be stimulated in the initial phase of urban developments? The research project concerns a qualitative exploration for an advisory company focusing on real estate and urban development. We focused on finding conceptual and empirical determinants of value creation in Urban Development. Based on the findings a value-creating framework was constructed as a management tool for real estate companies.