Changes in Social Impacts of Industrial Heritage Adaptive Reuse in High-Density Residential Environment: Reciprocal Relations Between Social Cohesion and Perceived Safety

Abstract

Assessing industrial heritage adaptive reuse projects as a dynamic process in a broader social context such as a neighboring community facilitates a better understanding of their effects. The present study addresses this issue using a cross-lagged model and focuses on perceived safety and social cohesion as two aspects of social sustainability. From 2017 to 2022, 230 participants residing near the “Innovation Factory” project in Mashhad, Iran, participated in a four-wave longitudinal study. The results of paired sample t-tests showed a considerable decrease in perceived safety after the project opening and identified this time point as a weakness that threatens the surrounding community. However, increased social cohesion and perceived safety after renovation compared to before affirms that the occurrence of temporary social deterioration does not necessarily signify long-term social costs. Un-gating an industrial heritage area can provide green spaces, thereby increasing the potential for spontaneous interactions and fostering social cohesion. Comparing models with diverse hypothesized patterns of connections between perceived safety and social cohesion affirmed that the reciprocal effects model has better-fit indexes. This transactional relationship indicates that the two studied variables are interdependent and accumulating concepts, each having a predictive impact on the other.