Urban Regeneration Processes and Social Impact: A Literature Review to Explore the Role of Evaluation

From urban regeneration to social regeneration up to culture-led regeneration, the concept of urban regeneration evolves from the idea of the physical transformation of cities to a more complex vision of changing able to improve the inhabitants’ quality of life. At the same time, the social dimension of the recognised impacts, from a factor juxtaposed to the regenerative processes, becomes central to build new models of “impact economy” with long-term sustainable effects. In this change of perspective, the driver is the repositioning of culture, the community's centrality and involvement, and the reuse of abandoned cultural heritage spaces. In urban regeneration processes, evaluation has thus assumed a decisive role in guiding strategic choices, empowering the communities involved, supporting decision-makers and attracting new funding. Starting from the keywords “urban regeneration” and “social impact”, the paper integrates the literature review with bibliometric maps through the VOSviewer tool to investigate the role of evaluation in a broader framework to feed the contemporary debate on the impacts of urban regeneration.