EDITOR’S COMMENT I know that promising to fix the housing crisis is always going to be a vote-winner, but it’s a bit boring as a political pledge, isn’t it? And empty.
Now, I know I’m probably dreaming, but wouldn’t it be great if just one of the political parties, just once, could talk about commercial real estate and the role that it plays in making this country of ours better.
Labour’s manifesto hadn’t dropped by the time I started typing this, so there’s always hope, but for once I’m not optimistic.
However, I do think our political parties are missing a trick. You’ve heard me say this before, but I really don’t believe there is any issue we face today that real estate couldn’t or shouldn’t be able to fix.
And where I am optimistic is around the increasing desire from real estate to take on board its responsibility for those fixes.
Let’s take a unique piece of research from the team at Cushman & Wakefield, exclusively shared with EG this week, that trawled through more than 5,000 data points to understand what truly makes an inclusive city. And more importantly, the unique and vital role that real estate plays in that.
There was a sentence in the report, somewhat nestled away towards the back, that for me perfectly summed up the massive responsibility this industry has. The opportunity it has – that should be recognised in every manifesto pushed out this week – and a truly powerful purpose.
That line was: “As active custodians of the built environment, we must never, never settle for the world that’s been built, but relentlessly drive it forward.”
What a sentence. Initially, I was a bit irritated that I hadn’t written it myself, to be honest, but could this be the mission statement for our sector, and form part of the built environment manifesto?
Whatever role you play in this vast and diverse sector, you are a custodian of place. If your role touches a building in some way, directly or indirectly, you are also intrinsically linked to the human beings who occupy those buildings and those around them. You are linked to the community in which those buildings sit and you are linked to the impact of that physical structure and all that goes on in and around it. That is a huge responsibility and we need to take it seriously.
And you must never, never settle for mediocrity. You have the power to make something better, more valuable, more inclusive, more sustainable. That is a huge opportunity and we need to take it seriously.
The word that really stood out though was “relentlessly”, and that for me is where the real responsibility lies. We in this wonderful world of real estate can never rest – we have to push forward every single day, we have to keep driving forward despite not being recognised in the way we should by our governments. We have to drive forward relentlessly despite the barriers that are often put in our way, and we have to do this because what real estate delivers really matters.
Take a dive into that Cushman report and see how the work that you do, whether that’s designing, building, advising or investing, has an impact on place and people (and everything in between).
For our places to be truly inclusive they need a mix of employment types, those done in shiny offices and those done in factories, they need to be open and accessible, without barriers and with connections, and they need to be green and clean and safe. They need to be all the things that are considered more and more in investment appraisals, in design meetings and certainly at consultation.
This is the power of commercial real estate. Its mixed-use, thoughtful delivery of place is what will enable the UK to find its feet again. It will help stabilise the economy, increase productivity and save our people and the planet from environmental and societal threat.
It might not be a pledge to build millions of homes, but surely, if communicated in the right way by a government that could truly understand, it could be a vote-winner, no?
It certainly should be.
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