Urban rent at risk: The point of view of private investors

Urban transformation and regeneration interventions are complex processes in which a multitude of actors act in order to generate an overall value higher than the investment and proportional to the risks, related to each phase of real estate development process. The trade-off between risk and return is one of the essential element in investment decisions, even more in the context of urban transformations projects characterized by long-term time horizons, hence the difficulty for investors to predict the future. In this context, the paper proposes a reflection on the relationship between return and risk in urban transformation and regeneration interventions, focusing on the private investor’s perspective. A first questionnaire was proposed to a selected panel of experts, as pre-test, in order to highlight how the different actors involved in development processes perceive risk and how their adversity varies due to their role and the development phase. The first results of the pre-test phase have pointed out interesting aspects that deserve an in depth investigation through a survey extended to a larger sample, such as the importance of the involvement of private operators and the use of multidimensional and multi-stakeholder models to support risk management.