Greg Lindsay's Blog

October 29, 2016  |  permalink

Urban Land Institute: Future Connectivity and Real Estate

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(Last month, I spoke to the Urban Land Institute’s Orange Couty/Inland Empire’s Multi-Housing Initiative Council about the various forces reshaping the housing market. U.S. Army Captain, graudate student, and intern(!) Samuel Nickles – pictured, far left – wrote a brief recap of my talk, which I am republishing below:)

Greg Lindsay, journalist and futurist, presented “What does Future Connectivity Mean to the Real Estate Industry” at the ULI Multi-Housing Initiative Council’s Annual program on September 15th in Newport Beach. During his presentation, he described the current landscape used for transportation, networks, and urban space management as a “heterogeneity with un-urbanized land areas”. He offered futuristic insights into the evolving constructs of urbanization drawing from other globalizing cities throughout the world. In doing so, developers can best target commercialized dead spaces or “stranded assets” in order to re-vitalize across all lines of interconnectivity. He addressed the following polymorphic areas in which countermeasures could be considered:

Take the Highway, they say. It’s faster, they say.

Dense cities cannot support the population growth with the size growth; this inevitably causes a supply and demand shortage.  This same dichotomy holds true with means of transportation and time. While Google is in its early stages of the “G-road” model of traveling autonomously on the interstate, urban planners are exploring multi-energy efficient ways of commuting to the multi-housing industry. Energy efficient transportation, such as bike paths and ride sharing applications, are at the fore front of innovation. However, bridging the gap between development and innovation could creatively provide emerging networks for economic development.  Collaborating with small businesses offers the potential for a more shared economy by incentivizing consumers (ride sharing vouchers, rental bikes, etc.) and creating a residentially commercialized industry.

Lifestyles of the Urbanite Pedestrian

The ebb and flow of multi-family housing can be widely seen throughout the 1970s and mid-1980s.  Further evidence suggests that the consumers are shifting from the traditional suburb environment to a more efficient, active-based urban lifestyle. This demographic inversion coupled with a minimalistic view of usage is appealing among the contemporary professional. The conundrum is the amount of commercial dead space not being utilized for urban development. Disaggregating unused business spaces and re-vitalizing has both residential and commercial applications. Whether it’s a multi-family housing unit, or a short term, multi-use space, developers can re-utilize once thriving shopping malls or widely used parking garages into a centric-based model of an urbanized micro-economy.

Tactics of Streetscapes

Public Space is “open air” market for profitability across various facets of capital.  Creating center spaces by re-activating dead space optimizing the value of commercial businesses and multi-family housing units. One approach he discussed was tactical urbanization for re-vitalizing areas. This gives creation to poly cultural neighborhoods and city gathering places. Such interventions adopted by municipalities’ places the sustainability back to the individual creating a wider shared economy.

Problems? Blame the Network

When we begin to identify structural holes in digital technology, we start to measure the performance and the collaboration efforts within a work space. The idea of reduced open space in the workplace escapes many, however intrigue others. Residential and commercial entities are utilizing these methods resulting in creating more organic connections/interactions, increasing productivity.

These areas can have mitigating factors that lie in the process of legislation and its relation to the rapidly evolving landscape of innovative economic growth measures. However, many cities have begun to adopt these innovative opportunities as a means of transforming the once traditional suburban landscape into a centric multi-use interconnection hub where people, goods, and services are exchanged at the micro level.

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Greg Lindsay is a generalist, urbanist, futurist, and speaker. He is a non-resident senior fellow of the Arizona State University Threatcasting Lab, a non-resident senior fellow of MIT’s Future Urban Collectives Lab, and a non-resident senior fellow of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Strategy Initiative. He was the founding chief communications officer of Climate Alpha and remains a senior advisor. Previously, he was an urban tech fellow at Cornell Tech’s Jacobs Institute, where he explored the implications of AI and augmented reality at urban scale.

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