Smart City & Urban Development

Smart City

The Smart City concept is an innovation strategy. Our goal here is to meet the challenges that urban areas can expect to face in the future – with smart technology solutions.

Population growth, rising demand for space, changes in the way we use resources (water, energy, data) and increased demands on mobility and infrastructure present society with a raft of new challenges. At the same time, our population is aging and our cities are undergoing continued structural change. So how can we manage the ecological, social, economic and cultural challenges with which cities can expect to be confronted?

A Smart City approach is one way of seeking answers to the issues facing urban areas. It is an innovation strategy incorporating solutions built on smart technology. A Smart City connects previously self-contained industries – such as the real estate and energy sectors, telecommunications and mobility – and gets them working together.

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Germany emits approx. 8.9t CO2 per person per year on average. The housing sector can contribute to reducing emissions.

Holistic strategy

Smart City tends to be used as a buzzword when neither the benefits for users nor the advantages for stakeholders are clearly defined. We see the Smart City as a holistic approach to innovative, connected development activities in the urban space, an approach in which very different projects and diverse themes are brought together and aligned into a single strategy.

Goals of the Smart City

Together with our clients, we have identified three key objectives for activities under the Smart City umbrella:

  • Realizing environmentally friendly measures and CO2savings: Through smart connectivity in the Smart City, the real estate industry can save money in collaboration with other sectors through direct and indirect measures
  • Increasing customer benefit and improving external perception
  • Improving economic profitability

Infrastructure as the basis

New technological possibilities are opening up in many Smart City use cases. Optimization and automation potential touches upon almost all areas of life, ranging from energy and heating to transportation (mobility) and entertainment. Our focus is on infrastructure – this being the core business of real estate companies and the gatekeeper for all services that tenants use or receive. A connected digital database is the starting point for further technological solutions.

Operationalizing the concept in a smart neighborhood

Realizing this potential calls for an agile strategy, the willingness to invest, and continuous repositioning in the market. The Smart City concept can be implemented across entire neighborhoods (in the form of lighthouse projects) or it can concentrate on products that bring benefits across the entire portfolio. Sensible projects that can already be implemented today include key management and the use of sensors in heating systems or elevators.

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The Smart City approach covers almost all areas of daily life.

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Smart City & Urban Development