Cultural heritage as a resource for property development

Adaptive reuse of cultural heritage has for the last decades resulted in an interplay between heritage and real estate values. Transformation of former industrial sites has turned out as leading examples of this development. Commodification of heritage has come into being by property developers realising heritage resources as real estate value with the result that two different value systems appear to overlap. The creative reuse of brownfields has also challenged management strategies for preservation and reuse contributing to the interplay. This article examines and discusses this interplay based on interviews with four developers involved in transformation of former industrial sites in Norway. Additional information and market analysis from an appraisal company supplies the interviews concerning which qualities are demanded by customers in the commercial sector. The data are analysed as potential indicators of how developers work and thereby given conceptual labels identified as categories and decisive factors for the interplay between cultural and economic value to occur. Five categories involving both hard and soft aspects, have through this procedure been identified of significance for how heritage is realised as a development resource; locational, timing, dependence on urban plans, dependence on the current market, and the long-term perspective and the economic capacity of the developer.