Commercial Property Vacancy for Building Adaptation and Re-use

In towns, cities, and regions throughout the industrialised and developing world, commercial property vacancy is a critical measure of the effectiveness of the real estate market, economic performance, and urban resilience. Buildings that are vacant provide a window into how well local economies are doing and how building space is evolving in these diverse places. However, there has been little conceptual reflection on the abstract notion of property vacancy beyond binary distinctions of natural and structural vacancy and cyclical economic performance over time. Although useful, simplifying meta-concepts during times of economic stability does not account for the internal complexity and imperfection that permeate real commercial property markets in contemporary times of transience, impermanence, and building adaptation. Consequently, the aim of this chapter is two-fold: 1) to outline a conceptual framework that describes commercial property vacancy across the commercial real estate building life cycle, charting the vacancy process as buildings adapt through initial construction to final demolition and redevelopment; and 2) to test this conceptual framework within a market context, comparing six major commercial property locations, 18,284 buildings, in the United Kingdom as they adapt, in various ways, to the changing nature of demand and the broader socio-economic context. Originality rests in conceptual utility as the first known holistic examination of commercial property vacancy beyond that of an abstract economic factor in the world and its grounding in the market context. Its significance is explicit in the typology that can be used by researchers interested in market imperfections and consequent adaptive interventions. The chapter concludes by outlining some new research opportunities that have been enabled by the augmented vacancy typology and considers some research limitations.