Social Capital and Public Policies for Commons: Bottom up Processes in Public Real Estate Property Valorization

Abstract

Valorisation of public real estate property has been lately matter of political and administrative discussions at national level. The policies currently promoted by public administration are oriented to simplify patrimonial and planning procedures. Recently, new valorisation forms of public property took place. In Italy, following relevant international examples, self-organized communities promoted profit and no profit activities in abandoned or undeveloped public real estate assets. The aim of the research consists in the analysis of the conditions for the successful value creation generated by bottom up, self-organized processes in the public real estate valorisation. Two hypothesis have been tested: the first one concerns the role of social capital as a premise of these initiatives; the second one regards the public policies supporting bottom up valorisations. The multivariate statistics have been used to analyze data and three clusters emerged from the empirical survey. The findings confirm the initial hypothesis of the research. Social capital is crucial for the development of bottom up public property valorisation. Nevertheless, where social capital is lacking, public policies appear to be relevant to support local bottom up entrepreneurship in cultural activities, welfare, and profit activities.