Abstract:  The reuse of vacant residential buildings offers a strategy for revitalizing “shrinking cities” and advancing urban sustainability by transforming underutilized spaces into community assets. However, the decision‐making process involves stakeholders from diverse disciplines with conflicting perspectives, which creates significant challenges that hinder progress. This study therefore identifies these key stakeholders and maps their interrelations with reuse challenges, addressing the question: Who are the key stakeholders involved in the challenges and conflicts of interest that hinder the decision‐making in residential building reuse? A semi‐systematic literature review followed by thematic analysis was employed to identify stakeholder groups, supplemented by stakeholder–issue mapping to analyze their interrelations. The study identified five key groups: property owners, investors, government representatives and regulators, building professionals, and users, community, and civic society. The findings demonstrate that challenges are highly interconnected across multiple stakeholders, revealing patterns of conflict and opportunities for collaboration. The study underscores the role of government in initiating and steering the process and identifies emerging roles for other actors, such as building professionals acting as mediators. Existing research adopts a narrow disciplinary lens and focuses less on residential buildings, risking an overlooking of crucial actor dynamics. By offering a holistic perspective on the stakeholders and their interrelations with reuse challenges, this study provides vital insights for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners seeking to manage urban vacancies as resources in “shrinking cities” and advance a circular built environment.

Keywords:  building reuse; circular built environment; shrinking cities; urban regeneration; urban shrinkage

Published:   9 March 2026

Issue:   Vol 11 (2026): Left-behind Places or Spaces of Possibilities? Shrinking Cities as Foregrounds for Urban Transitions (In Progress)