Added value of good design

The objectives of this paper are to review current research about the social and economic benefits associated with a well-designed built environment, to put the case for new methods that enable these sorts of benefits to be adequately captured, to speculate about what these new methods might look like, and, finally, to put forward an agenda outlining where new research is needed. Many reviews, primarily from the UK and US literature, are examined to illustrate the nature and diversity of recent, largely descriptive, research into the impact of good design on social and economic outcomes. It is argued that the likelihood of the research being taken up is limited because of the difficulty in capturing the value intangible benefits. The results from three workshops identified the types of value delivered by the built environment, the stakeholders to whom value accrues, the possibilities for new valuation methods and their implementation, and what new research is needed. Five groups of stakeholders emerged between whom value is exchanged; and six main types of value that the built environment delivers were identified: social value, cultural value, image value, economic value, use value and environmental value. Value maps, matrices and probability curves are put forward as possible approaches for exploring and capturing these varied sorts of value, while developments in brand valuation and environmental economics are identified as having potential application in the built environment. Although knowledge of the tangible and intangible benefits that arise from good design is growing, better information together with improved valuation methods and a new attitude towards evidence-based design are all needed if the built environment is to reflect the emerging understanding.