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Abstract
Infill redevelopment—the transformation of previously used urban sites—is generally
regarded as an important way to attain environmental and urban sustainability goals. At many
locales, however, such urban renewal, community development, and tax revenue goals must
be reconciled with historic preservation objectives. Are economic incentives and regulatory
relief useful tools for encouraging reuse of abandoned or underutilized urban sites with
historic buildings? Answering this question is of key importance for many European cities
and for older US cities, and has important implications in terms of urban sustainability and
“smart growth” initiatives. We use conjoint choice experiments to explore the relative
importance of economic incentives, regulatory relief, land use and property regime offerings
at underutilized historical sites in Venice, Italy. We survey real estate developers and
investors, and ask them to choose between pairs of hypothetical projects in three Venice
locations, as well as between one of these projects and the alternative to do a development
project elsewhere. Statistical models of the responses to these choice questions indicate that
respondents are sensitive to the price of acquiring the land (and hence to any policies that
influence prices), and especially sensitive to the property regime that would be granted to
developers and investors and to the allowable land use. Contrary to expectations, our
respondents were insensitive to tightening or relaxing the stringency of building conservation
restrictions. Our findings sound a common theme with Howland (2004), who warns that
redevelopment of previously used sites in Baltimore is impaired by obsolete land uses, zoning
and infrastructure (but not by suspected or actual contamination). We conclude that the City
should focus on offering land uses and property regimes that are more in tune with developer
demand.