Connect21 Webinar: Blurred Boundaries and Dealmaking in Urban Real Estate Development

On June 23, 2001, UGoveRN hosted the second public Connect21 webinar. Connect21 is a collaborative project to bridge multiple knowledge gaps in global real estate research. For the project, UGoveRN partnered with international planning and real estate scholars, practitioners, the AESOP Young Academic Network (AESOP YA), the African Real Estate Society (AfRES), the European Real Estate Society PhD Network (ERES), the Future Leaders of the African Real Estate Society (FLAfRES) and the Latin American Real Estate Society (LaRES).

The webinar focused on the fact that planners and real estate industry actors are dependent on each other for financing, regulating, and implementing urban real estate development. In this process, boundaries between public and private sectors, roles, and responsibilities are often blurred. The covid19 pandemic has accentuated this trend: cities are confronted with a growing number of issues (inadequate housing supplies, deficient amenities, property vacancies, inner-city retail challenges, etcetera) that can only be solved through close collaboration between planning authorities and real estate firms.

Presenters of this session were Emma Street, Associate Professor of Urban Policy and Governance at the University of Reading, and Francois Viruly, Associate Professor of Property Economics, Investment and Finance at the University of Cape Town. Eric Huybrechts, Manager of International Affairs at the Institute of Planning and Urbanism was the discussant.

The session centred around the following questions:

• Are planning authorities considering the dynamic needs and preferences of the real estate industry, and vice versa?

• To what extent are new forms of collaboration emerging, or are longstanding alliances and disputes simply continuing?

• And what are the short-term and long-term consequences of changing interdependencies and ways of dealmaking between planners and real estate industry actors?

The full recording of the webinar is available on UGoveRN's youtube channel: