Reflecting sustainability in the analysis of highest and best use: a case study of Polish municipalities

The combination of policy concerns over climate change, resource efficiency and the natural environment, has caused that municipalities, as owners of real property assets, need a new approach to their management. They are no longer only required to have accurate data on the condition they are in, the ongoing cost of their operating, maintaining, rehabilitating and eventually decommissioning, as well as knowledge about the value of the assets in their portfolio. More and more often municipalities are expected to embed sustainability targets in their real property asset management. Some of them are beginning to introduce the highest and best use analysis in the decision-making process that considers long-term environmental, economic and social objectives.So far, the reflection of sustainability in the analysis of the highest and best use of municipalities' real property assets has captured limited attention among researchers of the subject. The existing publications focus mainly on the mentioned analysis in enterprises. There are also a few papers which present the concept of the highest and best use in municipalities of the most developed countries, however not in the context of sustainability. Thus, this paper aims to fill this gap in the literature and to investigate the scope of sustainability incorporation in the process of determining the highest and best use of municipal real property assets including four tests (legally permitted, physically possible, financially feasible, maximally productive), based on the example of Polish biggest municipalities.