In the coming years, it will be possible to access mountains of aggregated market data and do real-time valuations for industrial, retail, and office properties; and buildings will be traded online the way that stocks are traded now. That is the world envisioned by a panel of real estate information technology providers at ULI’s 2015 Fall Meeting in San Francisco, and they expect to see it happening in the next few years.
Developers who are trying to fill the ever-expanding demands of technology companies have learned a few things about their clients: They want a place to park their bikes; they like bringing their dogs to work; and, above all, they love rooftop decks.
At the final session of ULI’s 2015 Fall Meeting in San Francisco, veteran futurist Paul Saffo advised architects and developers to prepare for technological change by remaining as flexible as they can. Saffo, a consulting associate professor at Stanford University and chairman of the futures track at Silicon Valley’s Singularity University, cautioned against betting too heavily on assumptions about what technology will predominate in the near future, and when it will take hold.
In a question-and-answer session at ULI’s 2015 Fall Meeting in San Francisco, John G. Stumpf, chairman, president, and CEO of Wells Fargo & Company, and Prologis chairman and CEO Hamid R. Moghadam both indicated that China’s recent economic deceleration is not as big of a worry as it might seem to jittery Wall Street investors.
The technology sector, which tends to advance rapidly in game-changing shifts, has long provided a glaring contrast to the real estate industry, which is based on long-lived assets and evolves slowly. But that dichotomy will soon fade, according to a panel of real estate and tech leaders at ULI’s Fall Meeting in San Francisco.
The benefits of globalism have been dramatic and widespread, and gains in artificial intelligence and other technologies will arrive at an exponential pace, say two noted futurists speaking at the ULI Fall Meeting.
Speaking at the ULI Fall Meeting in San Francisco, Airbnb cofounder Brian Chesky said he doesn’t see the company as a direct competitor to hotels, since its lodging shares often are located in residential neighborhoods rather than the downtown locations that hotels favor.
Robotic vehicles, drones, and other cutting-edge technological advances could soon reshape urban land use as radically as the automobile once did. Here are some leaders’ thoughts on how the future might look.
Not long ago, it seemed as if e-commerce would make brick-and-mortar retail as obsolete as rotary telephones. Instead, catalog and web retailer L.L.Bean is leading a wave of businesses that are building physical storefronts to drive their online trade.
At the closing session of the 2015 ULI Spring Meeting in Houston, two local icons—landmark real estate developer Gerald D. Hines and James A. Baker III, who served in three presidential administrations and was secretary of state under President George H.W. Bush—talked about leadership and perhaps its most crucial ingredient: the willingness to take bold risks and run with game-changing ideas.
