The Future of Cities Post Covid

DigitalDisruption@BREI is a unique consortium of Academics, Real Estate Asset Managers, Developers, Property Services Firms, Funding Institutions, Lawyers and other Professionals and Representative Trade bodies, which will drive adoption of both inventive and innovative ‘deep tech’ in the Global Real Estate market.

The Consortium was launched with a series of Summer roundtables and workshops, sponsored by Greystar, Nuveen and Arup. 

The focus of the consortium is the development and deployment of research that relates to the current and future world of Real Estate. PropTech, Real Estate FinTech and PropRegTech are all fast moving sectors which are having a radical impact on what has historically been a slow moving, traditional and conservative industry.

Accurate, critical and verified data is essential as an enabler in Real Estate for data analytics, climate change and sustainability, valuations and transactions using blockchain and AI techniques. We are launching the consortium with a series of virtual events which are being held over the summer.

The Future of Cities Post Covid was an invite-only event led by two of our founding sponsors, Nuveen and Greystar. We are delighted to announce that Arup also joined as a founding sponsor, other organisations who we have been coordinating with over the recent months include UCL Estates, RICS, British Property Federation, Leeds and Newcastle City Councils and other UK and international participants.

The second event was a workshop on the use of data throughout the development process to improve the design, build and operation of High Rise Residential Buildings (HRRB) following the Hackitt Report on building safety. This took place at the end of June.

The final event is a workshop on IoT data for smart cities/sustainability and our proposal for a data marketplace on 16th July 2020.

The consortium is a joint venture between the Bartlett Real Estate Institute and Resilience Partners Limited, and with Professor Andrew Edkins and me acting as joint chairs. We are especially grateful to the time, support and encouragement from Professor Philip Treleaven (UCL Computing), Kyle McFadden of Greystar and Jack Sibley of Nuveen for our current progress during these challenging times.

Jeremy Barnett, Honorary Professor of Algorithmic Regulation, BREI.