Green real estate development took on a new meaning this week at the Realty real estate trade fair in Brussels. Property developers will have to factor in space for city farms in their future planning to feed a global urban population that the UN expects to rise by 60% in 2040, delegates heard at a seminar organised by the Belgian Property Federation (UPSI-BVS).
Urban agriculture isn't some pet mascot to sell a project, it's actually a key element of future real estate development,' Jean-Louis Missika, Vice-Mayor of Paris responsible for urbanism, said during a panel session. Agritecture – the complete integration of urban agriculture within city architecture – is an essential component for green and sustainable real estate development, Missika said.
In a rapidly urbanising world, food production needs to be integrated into 'densifying' cities to supply residents in a 'hyper-local manner', futurologist Stefaan Vandist added.
The greening of our cities has gathered momentum in recent years as developers and investors have picked up the baton from politicians and environmentalists warning about the potentially dire consequences of climate change and the need to reduce CO2 emissions. Most industry experts agree that greater effort is still needed as the built environment accounts for a staggering 60% of CO2 emissions.
So far, sustainability efforts have focused on making new buildings carbon neutral through the greater use of environmentally friendly materials and measures to reduce energy consumption. Increasingly efforts are also focused on existing buildings where the real problem lies. But there is still quite a way to go given that existing properties accounts for the bulk of total stock.
Moreover, viewed from the outside carbon-neutral offices, shopping centres or homes look no greener than their older and less sustainable counterparts. Sure, they may tick all the boxes that the regulators have come up with, but even if their owners were to place big signs on them saying this building is LEED or BREEAM certified, the physical environment would not feel any greener.
New vision of the future
That's why the vision of the future set out by the vice-mayor of Paris at Realty is so exciting for all urban dwellers in Europe. The fact that Paris is taking the lead in an initiative that will physically transform parts of the largest capital on the European Continent has immense ramifications.
Not all that long ago farms were located very close to urban conglomerations, even some of the larger ones like Paris. In the wake of the industrial revolution, urban planners across Europe pushed the farms out further to make room for new dwellings for a huge wave of labourers who had flocked to their towns and cities to work in the nearby factories. The ongoing transition in the last decades to a services industry has simply intensified that trend.
But with urbanisation set to spread further as a means of meeting the needs of several billion more people in the next two decades, urban leaders are revisiting the original structure of our physical environment and have come up with some very interesting ideas.
During his presentation, Missiki pointed to the Reinventing Paris initiative, a crowd sourcing competition aimed at developing sites within and around the city, while incorporating 30 hectares of urban agriculture into many of the 22 projects.
One of the most ambitious Reinventing Paris projects is Mille Arbres (A thousand trees), where an actual forest will be grown in suspension above the city’s northern ring road, nestling a hyper green commercial building – ie that meets all the official sustainability criteria - atop of which a residential village full of greenery will be constructed.
This 'bridge' of urban vegetation physically and symbolically connects the centre of the city and its rural suburbs. Within the forest an urban farm will produce food for the restaurants housed within the complex itself.
As the hunt for real estate has intensified in recent years, investment in alternative assets has become the new mantra for return-hungry institutional investors which are having a hard time amid a prolonged period of record low interest rates. Mille Arbres not only sets down a marker that the Paris of the future could be the city of a thousand farms. It also provides a vision of a new sub-sector with the potential of becoming another – thriving – asset class.
Judi Seebus
Editor in Chief PropertyEU
