The Voyage Brief | November 2020 | PwC, The New York Times, Brookings, TechCrunch, Architectural Digest, The Architect’s Newspaper, NPR, New York Residential Agent Continuum
As we think about planning for 2021, the pieces below provided us with valuable strategic perspectives this month. We hope that they do the same for you.
Ryan Graybill | via Unsplash
01 | PwC
➤ Emerging Trends in Real Estate®: US and Canada: Highlights | ➤ Full Report
The report includes proprietary data and insights from 1,600 leading real estate industry experts, discussing in detail how COVID-19 impacted real estate development in 2020, and new opportunities as we plan for 2021.
18-hour cities continue to dominate the top locales primed for growth; the markets primed for growth include Raleigh/Durham, Austin, and Nashville just to name a few. Gateway markets such as New York, San Francisco, and Boston (premium-priced) will recover as we move towards a vaccine, and as they regain their validation as cultural capitals of the world.
What’s next for 2021 + beyond? Greater investments in total well-being, an increased focus on social justice, high growth in the Sunbelt cities, a hybrid office/working remote landscape, adaptive reuse, and diversification of product for development teams with only one product type.
Image via Bumblebee Spaces
02 | The New York Times
➤ Covid Pushes Real Estate Into the Future
Nine months into the pandemic, real estate development has advanced years ahead when it comes to technology. Early adopters of new thinking and technologies often find themselves tackling a tougher learning curve, yet almost always outperform their peers who sit on the sidelines.
Stefanos Chen takes us through several technology-focused offerings, making the case that some may be here to stay, such as robotic furniture that reimagines itself inside floor plans that require every square foot to be utilized, apps designed to bring residents together and seamlessly manage amenity spaces, and how ultraviolet light can destroy bacteria.
We recently wrote about Five Technologies That Real Estate Development Teams Should Utilize Now. We recommend that development teams first come up with as specific as possible desired outcomes, before they begin vetting PropTech offerings, and should optimize for a balance of experience and technical skills - the learning curve for a PropTech company to fully immerse themselves in development will take a little time.
John Towner | via Unsplash
03 | Brookings
➤ Connecting people and places: Exploring new measures of travel behavior: Highlights | ➤ Full Report
The changes brought on by COVID-19 will mean that locales need to address new challenges and opportunities for their land use and transportation policies, adapting them for growth, future resilience, and to foster more diverse and inclusive built environments.
Adie Tomer, Joseph Kane, and Jennifer S. Vey take us through this detailed analysis of America’s travel habits; reframing the challenges that locales, development teams, and communities will face, while and offering new justification for policies to achieve a more inclusive and resilient built environment.
With greater proximity to shared benefits, both people and places will benefit - access to resources drives equity and inclusion, walking and biking increase physical health, and affordable transportation will enable the growth of new locales, both for residents and people who come to work or play.
Elodie Oudot | via Unsplash
04 | TechCrunch
➤ Spacemaker, AI software for urban development, is acquired by Autodesk for $240M
We strongly believe that embracing generative and parametric design solutions is the future (and it will not put good architects out of business). Autodesk’s ($56BN company) acquisition of Norway-based Spacemaker further validates our thinking that generative design is the future to save development teams time + money.
What is it? Simply put, it’s a design exploration process. Designers or engineers input design goals into the software, along with parameters such as performance or spatial requirements, materials, manufacturing methods, and cost constraints. The software explores all the possible permutations of a solution, quickly generating design alternatives. It tests and learns from each iteration what works and what doesn’t.
Sidewalk Labs recently introduced its software Delve to the market earlier this month. TestFit is an earlier entrant to this space, and Australia’s Archistar.ai launched ahead of the curve in 2010. Some questions that teams should be asking - How early is the team ready to utilize generative design software? What will the team’s evaluation criteria and metrics be? How far can the parameters of generative design be expanded?
Kyler Boone | via Unsplash
05 | Architectural Digest
➤ See How D.C.’s Iconic Tidal Basin Is Being Reimagined by Five Design Teams
With over 36 million annual visitors, the National Mall aka “America’s Front Yard,” is the most visited National Park in the country. Via the Tidal Basin Ideas Lab, the public has the opportunity to weigh in, and give feedback to five proposed design ideation schemes to reimagine and protect the site.
AD’s Elizabeth Fazzare takes us through the concepts by Brooklyn-based DLANDstudio, Seattle-based GGN, New York-based James Corner Field Operations, Oakland-based Hood Design Studio, and Cambridge-based Reed Hilderbrand which include options for land bridges, protecting the shoreline, and the introduction of native plantings to help protect the site from flooding and allow it to grow organically for future generations.
The stakeholder team may adopt one, none, or parts of several of the solutions set forth by the design teams. Walter Hood’s quote seems so poignant given the year we’re having: “Landscape is a medium of exchange between humans and the environment,” he explains. “It can tell a very powerful story.”
Image via Grace Farms Foundation
06 | The Architect’s Newspaper
We think about where our food comes from, where our clothes come from…but we don’t always think about where our buildings, or the materials we use to build them come from. This report is essential reading for anyone working in the built environment. New Canaan based Grace Farms Foundation has given us the framework to begin this difficult discussion.
The report is written and edited by Grace Farms Foundation CEO Sharon Prince along with Luis C.deBaca, and Chelsea Thatcher describes the influences of each member of the new development supply chain, along with the key risk factors that encourage a version of modern-day slavery within the built environment.
Design for Freedom (full report here) aims to prove that impactful change is possible when awareness is raised and collective action is taken. The report is complemented by a website featuring original content as well as tools and checklists geared toward five the core audiences of owners + investors, design + architecture, construction, manufacturers + importers, and academics.
Donnel Baird via Dan Charles | NPR
07 | NPR
➤ Fighting Climate Change, One Building At A Time (listen or read)
Entrepreneur Donnel Baird has combined his passion for Black civil rights alongside his desire to have an impact on climate change with his company BlocPower, which is laser-focused on one of the most frustrating sources of America's greenhouse emissions: old residential buildings. We believe that any sustainability or diversity-focused initiative must answer to the business case first, and BlocPower does.
Hosted by NPR’s Dan Charles via Weekend Edition, Baird takes us through a four-story brownstone in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood. “The neighborhood remains largely African American and West Indian," Baird says. BlocPower looked at this building and saw a business opportunity, BlocPower promised that the co-op owners' bills would go down. And they'd be helping the planet, with lower greenhouse emissions.
The changes cut the carbon footprint of this building by 40% right away. Per Baird "Solar panels aren't just for rich people or for white people. They're for everybody.” In many of BlocPower's projects, the company finances the entire investment, so building owners don't have to pay anything upfront. They then pay back the investment over time through their utility bills, yet those bills still are lower than before the changes.
Image via the Economic Policy Institute
08 | New York Residential Agent Continuum (NYRAC)
➤ NYRAC Forward: Agents For Equality Roundtable with Richard Rothstein (watch or listen)
BV recently partnered with NYRAC on their Agents for Equity Roundtable and our founder, Meghna Krishna Bondili co-moderated a panel with bestselling author and esteemed academic Richard Rothstein, author of “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.”
In our panel discussion, co-moderated with NYRAC Board Member and Compass agent Terrence Harding, we discussed the difficult things - Why is real estate such an important element in the narrative of systemic racism? Why are ALL Americans responsible for solving this? How have a few decades of not having the opportunity to build generational wealth, set African Americans up for multi-generational poverty? Finally, how can we help enable policies of zero segregation, and bring people together?
We believe that to move forward, we must understand, accept, and take responsibility for our collective past. Rothstein recently wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times, “The Black Lives Next Door,” which illustrates the kind of activity that a local civil rights committee could design to redress segregation in its suburban community - sign up to learn when the National Committee to Redress Segregation is launched here.
Butterfly Voyage hopes that these pieces inform, inspire, + educate you about ways in which to navigate the adventure that 2020 is proving to be. We will continue to curate, discover, and share.