The social embeddedness of brownfield regeneration actors: Insights from social networks analysis

Stakeholder involvement in land management has been considered in both normative and analytical terms, but often in an undifferentiated way. The article aims to compare these two perspectives by proposing, first, a mixed methods approach consisting of semistructured interviews and social network analysis. Second, it explores a social network of stakeholders by inductively developing and illustrating three indicators of social embeddedness. These are the relative embeddedness of stakeholder groups, the level of overall network coherence across multiple regeneration goals, and the relative distance between non-decision makers and those making decisions. The case study used is the regeneration of Area 2, a site in Porto Marghera, Italy. The article concludes by presenting a baseline assessment of the Area 2 regeneration network and suggesting several widely applicable ways to foster stakeholder involvement in regeneration processes via improved communication.