Measuring social value in living environments

Residential buildings should be more than places to live – they should be places where people can thrive. They should help create vibrant, inclusive and sustainable communities, and contribute to people’s well-being and quality of life. But how do you achieve this? And how do you measure progress?

“The concept of social sustainability is a very broad term,” says Christina Ingelsten, Sustainability Manager, Skanska Rental Residential in Sweden. “We need to make it more concrete so that it is easier to translate it into practical action.”

A comprehensive index for measuring social value

To address this challenge, the team at Skanska has developed SoVI, a social value creation index designed to measure social sustainability in residential developments. The concept originated in the “Social values ​​all the way” project, where we collaborated with the Tyréns consultancy and Lund municipality in Sweden, to develop a framework for social sustainability in planning and construction processes.

The SoVi tool is essentially a checklist that covers 82 parameters, organized into four categories: the apartment, the building, outdoor spaces and the community. Overall, the index covers a broad range of factors that affect the project’s social value contributions. It starts at the level of individual apartments, with factors such as ceiling height, sight lines and natural light, and expands to include wider social factors such as access to communal space and public transport. The parameters are then used to calculate 15 different score indicators.

“SoVI helps us to create a structure for how we can take shared responsibility through our projects,” says Christina. “We can use it to set goals early on in a project and devise concrete measures for meeting those goals. We can then use the index to monitor implementation and compare projects’ performance over time.”

Applying SoVI in the real world
 

In developing SoVI, we were able to benefit from our experience incorporating social value into existing residential developments, such as the Kvibergsstaden neighborhood in Gothenburg, Sweden. Here the police, the municipality, architects and residents have all been involved in the project, resulting in a more holistic approach to safety. Steps to prevent social exclusion were taken in collaboration with local schools and labor market initiatives to increase employment opportunities. The area also features a popular walking track, an outdoor gym, and plenty of communal seating and shared spaces.

“Kviberg is one of several great examples of Skanska’s investments in social sustainability,” adds Christina. “We have incorporated that experience into developing SoVI together with knowledge from the research project.”

We are now using SoVI in all our rental residential projects in Sweden and are hoping to inspire other developers to increase their social innovation and initiatives.

“At its core, this is about all of us wanting to create safe, pleasant, and attractive urban living environments,” Christina says. “It’s important that we as residential developers use our scope for action wisely and have the knowledge needed to invest in measures that truly make an impact.”

To learn more about how we work with creating long-term value in urban development, read the Shaping Sustainable Places report.