There’s no question that the urban landscape is evolving.
With significant societal shifts rooted in the past decade’s turbulent economic and political climate, mid-market retail spaces are struggling to stay competitive. Retailers are consolidating and cutting store numbers in response to rising costs, leaving once bustling high streets empty and large department stores boarded up.
Meanwhile the increased interest in home and hybrid working spaces since the pandemic has dramatically reduced demand for the once ubiquitous office block. As a result, property owners and developers are now seeking innovative ways to repurpose underutilised office spaces to better align with evolving market needs and consumer preferences.
Looking at these changing requirements alongside an ongoing residential crisis, developers are finding residential real estate opportunities in unlikely places, repurposing spaces traditionally used for professional purposes for family and communal living.
Transforming spaces such as shopping centres, golf courses, and office blocks into residential areas, hotels, or mixed-use developments is becoming an increasingly popular solution to an undersupplied housing market. These transformations can form part of wider urban resilience strategies, promoting sustainability while addressing the evolving needs of modern communities.
Read on to explore the complexities of repurposing buildings for residential use, from current urban regeneration case studies to flexible and future-proof design ideas that can account for changing needs and neighbourhoods.
Changing Needs and Evolving Neighbourhoods
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the way people live and work has shifted fundamentally. The rise of remote and hybrid working has reduced the need for traditional office spaces, while the housing crisis has increased the demand for residential properties.
As a result, many professionals are moving out of city centres into suburban areas. Urban neighbourhoods that were once primarily inhabited by professionals are now adapting to accommodate families, while new forms of living arrangements such as co-living properties are emerging to coax young professionals back into expensive city centres.
This shift has highlighted the need for urban resilience strategies that can adapt to the changing demands of modern society. Property professionals are at the forefront of this evolution, tasked with finding innovative solutions to repurpose and revitalise urban spaces.
Neighbourhood-focused planning is becoming more critical, as post-pandemic communities seek spaces that blendliving, working, and social environments. One emerging trend is the development of large disused buildings such as shopping centres, stadiums and conference centres into multi-use buildings that blend residential, commercial, and communal spaces. These developments allow for greater flexibility in how spaces are used, providing a solution to the growing demand for housing without sacrificing commercial opportunities.
Benefits and Challenges
The practice of transforming underused spaces such as shopping centres, golf courses, and office blocks into residential, hotel, or mixed-use developments has become increasingly popular. However, while this trend presents numerous opportunities, it also comes with significant challenges.
Pros of Urban Redevelopment
Revitalising Underused Spaces: Urban redevelopment transforms abandoned or underutilised areas into vibrant, functional spaces, contributing to economic growth, job creation, and community cohesion in previously neglected areas.
Environmental Sustainability: Redevelopment often prioritises sustainability by repurposing existing structures, reducing the need for new construction materials, and lowering the environmental impact of building. It also helps reduce urban sprawl, promoting denser, more efficient use of land and infrastructure.
Improved Infrastructure: Redevelopment can lead to the modernisation of outdated infrastructure, enhancing public transportation, utilities, and green spaces, which improves the livability and attractiveness of urban areas.
Cons of Urban Redevelopment
Gentrification: A common drawback is the potential for gentrification in affordable neighbourhoods, where long-time residents may be displaced due to rising property values and living costs. This can erode the cultural and social fabric of existing communities, and create unrest amongst displaced families and individuals.
High Costs: Redevelopment projects often come with significant financial challenges. Retrofitting buildings for alternative uses often involves significant structural changes, from adjusting floor plans to meeting new safety codes. While large-scale projects may be able to absorb these costs, smaller buildings may find such expenses prohibitive.
Planning and Legal Hurdles: Navigating zoning laws, securing planning permission, and addressing community concerns can create delays and obstacles, making redevelopment projects time-consuming and difficult to implement. Planning authorities may have concerns about the impact on infrastructure, local services, and community aesthetics, which can slow down or even halt the approval process.
Developments Considered for Regeneration
Developers are increasingly on the lookout for opportunities to transform underutilised or outdated spaces into functional residential or mixed-purpose developments. Key factors that drive this search include the potential for high foot traffic, accessibility to transportation, and the existing infrastructure that can support diverse uses.
Ideal redevelopment sites often feature structures that can be adapted for residential, mixed-use, or community-centric purposes, enabling developers to meet the growing demand for innovative living and working environments.
As the landscape shifts toward sustainable practices, developers also prioritise spaces that allow for environmental improvements, such as green infrastructure and energy-efficient designs.
Shopping Centres
As consumer demand shifts toward online shopping experiences, shopping centres face declining foot traffic and increasing vacancy rates. Many are being repurposed as residential units, mixed-use developments, or community hubs.
For example, the La Vie shopping centre in Porto is being converted into offices, while the Clerys department store in Dublin has been converted to provide a blend of retail, office and leisure to breathe new life into a declining high street.
At the same time, many shopping centres are diversifying their portfolio of tenants, with community-oriented services such as medical and veterinary services buying out shops or floors of the developments.
The benefits of these changes are clear: they regenerate underutilised spaces, address housing and workspace shortages, and revitalise surrounding neighbourhoods.
However, the scale and complexity of repurposing a shopping centre can pose significant logistical challenges such as zoning regulations, planning permission, and the struggles of retrofitting older commercial buildings to meet modern residential standards. Without adequate funding, projects of this scale and nature may be inaccessible to many neighbourhoods.
Banks
As of 2024, nearly 50% of bank units in the UK have closed, with only 43% of 2014’s locations still operational. This has left prominent town centre locations vacant, many of which are buildings of historic interest.
Many ex-bank buildings have already successfully been repurposed for alternative retail, leisure, or service functions, such as cafés, bakeries, and hair salons. The introduction of the E-class designation in 2020 has facilitated this transformation by allowing greater flexibility in repurposing, enabling many former bank spaces to serve new and relevant community needs.
This shift is vital for creating busy community-centric high streets that rely on consistent foot traffic. The conversion of these vacant bank units can not only revitalise local economies but also enhance community engagement and improve the overall perception of urban spaces.
Golf Courses
Golf courses often hold prime positions on the outskirts of cities, intending to draw tourist traffic to the area and provide luxury pursuits for residents. With increasing numbers of golf clubs closing due to declining memberships, many of these locations are now viewed as prime land for residential development or environmental rewilding.
London alone is home to 95 courses, raising concerns about equitable land use in a congested city. Around 40% of these courses are owned by local councils grappling with significant housing shortages. The speculative “Holes to Homes” plan for Enfield Golf Course offers a blueprint for how councils could better utilise these assets.
The plan arranges new homes in villa blocks across nine fairways and putting greens, with an ecological commitment to preserving every tree on the site. Additionally, the development would enhance biodiversity by rewilding parts of the course, including the creation of a new wetland.
As golf courses require a lot of wide, open, flat space, they are an ideal blank slate for sympathetic housing developments, or much-needed parkland offering natural landscapes to urban communities. However, these projects can face opposition from local communities, and require careful planning to balance environmental impact and housing needs.
Office Blocks
The rise of home working has left many office blocks under-occupied, making them prime candidates for conversion into residential units. Of course, this is no new phenomenon: since 2015, approximately 14.4 million square feet of office space in England has already been transformed into housing, with another 37.9 million square feet in the pipeline.
Projects like the Clay conversion in Salford exemplify this trend, enhancing the city’s residential offerings amid changing demands. This office-to-residential conversion project has taken two early 1990s office buildings and incorporated them into a distinctive Build-to-Rent scheme. This project intends to contribute to the growing residential market in Salford, enhancing the city’s housing options.
This repurposing addresses the pressing housing shortage while promoting environmental sustainability by reducing the need to demolish unused buildings. However, careful planning is essential to ensure that these conversions meet modern safety and efficiency standards and create balanced communities in previously business-oriented areas.
Looking to the Future: Designing to Adapt
While repurposing old buildings for residential and community use can be difficult to achieve, developers can be proactive by designing new developments from the ground up with alternative use options in mind.
As the past decade has shown, unprecedented social, political and economic events can completely change the needs of a community or neighbourhood. Therefore new buildings that can be easily adapted to different functions in the future will offer greater flexibility and longevity, making them more resilient to societal and economic changes, and in turn better investments.
A residential building could be designed with modular units that can be easily reconfigured for different uses—such as converting individual apartments into co-living spaces, or even office units. Similarly, new commercial spaces can be designed with flexible layouts that can accommodate a range of different tenants over time, reducing the risk of long-term vacancies.
When it comes to future-proof design, sustainability in mind is increasingly of the essence. Buildings that meet modern energy efficiency standards, use sustainable materials, and incorporate green spaces are not only more environmentally friendly but also more attractive to future tenants, regardless of whether or not the building’s primary use changes.
Local Councils and Urban Planning
The challenge of repurposing and retrofitting older properties often stems from the complexities of obtaining planning permission, which can be particularly arduous due to strict urban regulations and historical preservation concerns.
Many older buildings must be upgraded to meet specific safety, accessibility, and energy efficiency standards for modern dwellings, complicating the retrofitting process. Additionally, local planning frameworks may not be adequately equipped to handle innovative projects that seek to transform public spaces into residential units or mixed-use developments, leading to delays and potential rejections.
Empowering local councils to take greater control over urban planning could significantly alleviate these challenges. By devolving powers to local authorities, decision-making can become more responsive and tailored to the specific needs of the community, facilitating the development of properties that align with local goals.
Conclusion
As the needs of society evolve, so too must the urban spaces in which people live, work, and interact. For property professionals, the repurposing of disused or inefficiently used buildings presents both a challenge and an opportunity.
While retrofitting and converting buildings can be costly and complex, the benefits of revitalising urban spaces, meeting the demand for housing, and promoting sustainability make it a worthwhile pursuit for developers, investors and councils alike.
At the same time, designing new buildings with flexibility and adaptability in mind can help future-proof developments, ensuring that they remain relevant in the face of changing societal needs. To this end, co-living and multi-use properties represent an exciting opportunity to address the housing crisis in a future-proof way while fostering community and sustainability.
Ultimately, property professionals will play a critical role in shaping the future of urban spaces, working alongside local authorities and communities to create resilient, adaptable environments that can meet the demands of future communities.