Decision-making in the European Municipal Real Estate Management – A Case Study Approach

A considerable part of the European property portfolio is owned by municipalities. In a market economy this raises several important questions, for instance whether the real estate management in public administrations is as efficient and effective as in private institutions. We address this question by looking at one important detail: the way decisions are made in European cities. Surely this detail cannot fully answer the question, but it can provide us with meaningful hints for further research and for improvements in practice. Since the data is scarce, we take an in-depth look at two selected cities, Gdańsk and Jena, to find out about the decision-making processes in reality. For each city we describe the current situation, the strategy, the organisation, and the decision-making process. We conclude our paper with a summary of the findings from the case studies and some suggestions for other cities on how to improve real estate management by improving the decision-making process.