The ability to demonstrate social value, the positive impact that real estate investing and development can have on its communities beyond financial returns, is becoming an increasing priority for real estate owners and developers. Whether operationally or reputationally, more organisations are seeing that the overall success of their projects – both financially and socially – will increasingly come through guiding more of their activities to have a positive impact.

ULI is beginning a project to understand how the industry is evolving its thinking on social value, and tackling the one major barrier, which is how to measure it. One part of the project, which we would like to discuss in this brainstorming workshop is to examine how real estate owners and developers are currently measuring social value in new and existing projects. What metrics are they using and what does success look like in the short- and long-term?