Industrial Zone 2.

0:
Design-Zavod Flacon,
Moscow
Growing large investments
and local projects
David Barrie, 25 October 2009
We love things that are
epic….
 ….but the theme of our
everyday lives is increasingly
nothing to do with objects but
relationships…
We have created platforms for
social interaction…
But what we see out of the
window is important…
We prefer this…
…to this…
…this…
…to this…
How can we turn horror in to
beauty? And how might we
bring all of the energy and
vitality of social interaction to
bear upon the places that
blight our everyday lives?
Places like old factories…
My background is in the
media, in producing TV
programmes…
One of the essences of media
production is to take the tiny
and turn it in to an epic…
 But it is the effective
sequencing and evolution of a
narrative that helps create a
compelling, larger than life,
memorable experience…
 Since 1991, I have been
creating projects that have
generated ideas for or
delivered new uses for public
spaces…
What I’ve learnt is that there is
a key value connection in the
world of real estate and urban
development….
Big project investment ⇄
Local project investment
 In Cardiff, Wales, an investor
responsible for a development
valued at over £300m wants
to deliver a mixed-use site that
is culturally cutting edge…
But how to do that when the
surrounding social and
physical infrastructure is
dilapidated…
And the ‘knowledge economy’,
as evidenced by poor public
internet facilities lacks
investment and energy?
 One answer is an initiative
that I created and has just
started that aims to integrate
and augment online social
media networking in the
area…
Another answer is to run an
open design ideas event, for
everyone to contribute their
ideas for the future. This is
what we did last year.
 What’s the value of this to the
large real estate project?
• ‘Knowledge uplift’
• Supply chains for local news/information for future tenants
• Basic skills training for future employees of IT tenants
• Cultivates thriving market of residential customers for area
broadband suppliers leading to prospective commercial
discounts
• Making a market for local communications
• Support the marketing of a knowledge economy
 Here’s a second example,
from Middlesbrough, North-
East England…
 A developer is bringing
forward the development of a
major docklands regeneration
site…
His master plan, overseen by
architect Will Alsop, includes
using public spaces for
growing food…
But the physical infrastructure
of the existing city landscape
is often barren…
And levels of health and
lifestyle in the city isn’t
healthy…
With an artist and a designer, I
created, designed and
delivered a process in the city
that has now been run for
three years in which people
across the city grew food,
learned how to cook it and
celebrated the harvest in an
epic event: a ‘town meal’
 An architect was
commissioned to draw a new
landscape master plan for the
town including where people
grew food in our project,
historically have grown food
and other green spaces
 In effect the capacity of the
city to become a productive
food landscape was
established and confirmed in
the popular imagination
What’s the value of this to the
real estate developer?
• Demonstrator for food growing in the city
• Development of economies of scale for localised food
production > economic argument for development of
more growing spaces
• Development of opportunity for shared management
with local government of public spaces on site
• Development of opportunity for local food offer by
hotels and restaurants on site in future
• Marketing emphasis upon well-being in the town >
more favourable climate for investors
 The value opportunity can
happen in reverse. Local
projects can enable new and
growing investments too…
 In this urban renewal project
in Castleford, Yorkshire that I
created in 2002, a specialist
team, the local community and
a big consortium of public and
private agencies delivered a
programme that revitalized 11
public spaces in the town…
 The process started by
creating a project office from a
derelict, vacant retail unit….
It featured lots of opportunities
for people to say what they
liked and didn’t like about their
town and how it might be
improved…
 The ‘top ten’ places that
people wanted to see improve
in the town became the
subject of a design ideas
competition…
 And local people chose the
ideas and designers they
wanted to see happen in their
town…
 The capital development
programme was supported by
a huge number of micro art,
culture, educational, social
and economic projects…
Lol Coxhill in a skip
Concept Simon Thackray. Produced by The Shed. Photo: Tony Bartholomew
 And formal commissions of
new work by international
artists from Europe and Latin
America…
Lol Coxhill in a skip
Concept Simon Thackray. Produced by The Shed. Photo: Tony Bartholomew
Lol Coxhill in a skip
Concept Simon Thackray. Produced by The Shed. Photo: Tony Bartholomew
Across six years, £14.5m of
improvements of the town
were implemented, with
money sourced from over 20
different sources and work
delivered by a partnership of
over 11 public agencies…
The center piece of the project
was a bridge that has won
many prizes for its design…
 What’s was the value of the
initiative for real estate
•
investment and values?
A process that started with a grant of £100k has now leveraged
£250m of new private commercial/residential investment in the
town
• In other words, the local market over the next 10-15yrs is going
to enjoy 2000+ more residents
• Existing investors have seen the town marketed in over 20
countries > value uplift
• The principal of risk-taking and design excellence in the town
over time is likely to lead to greater confidence and native skills
in self-organisation
 This is about a more sustainable,
effective investment return, as well as
confidence-building, empowerment and
an an uplift in the local skills economy.
Finally, my latest project…
A team of us plan to take an
empty retail unit in London
and turn it in to a co-
operatively owned and
managed grocery store…
The project is modelled on the
successful Park Slope Coop in
Brooklyn, New York
 Our objectives
• Diversify local economy throughmutual enterprise
• Establish principal of shared assets and resources and
collective organization in the High Street
• Develop the scalable use of vacant retail units
• Integrate delivery of some local services
• Innovate the hyper-local social, as well as financial
economy
• Create value uplift in adjacent premises
 We’ve only just start the
process of creating
momentum for change to
support the delivery of the
project and its business
plan…
This is our project slogan…
 I hope that I have established
for you the principle and value
of investment in small projects
and their value to large ones
in our towns and cities
There is an interdependence
here that is important
 And also a story about how
relationships between product,
audience and investment
plays out in the public realm
It fits in to a context of a larger
change in the relationships
between audiences and
product, large and small,
that’s instrumental to the
Internet economy
 Global snapshot
• Watch video clips online -
394m
• Read blogs - 346m
• Read personal blogs - 321m
• Visit a friends social network
page - 307m
• Share a video clip - 303m
• Manage a profile on a social
network - 272m
• Upload photos - 248m
• Download a video podcast -
216m
• Start own blog - 184m
• Upload video clip - 183m
• Subscribe to a news feed -
160m
An age of new narrative that
relies critically upon word of
mouth…
Product and value is no longer
a one-way transaction…
 And real estate investors can
ill-afford to sit back and ignore
the social, cultural and
economic infrastructure of
place, an attitude exemplified
by the phrase…
 There is a key connection
between all of this and ideas
now emerging - led by Cisco
Systems in the U.S.A. - on
‘connected urban systems’…
Connected urban systems
Also with the development of
‘intelligent buildings’:
structures that are not just
electronically controlled
internally but seamlessly
connected to the outside
world…
Connected real estate
Thank you!
 David Barrie
David Barrie & Associates
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Barrie
Blog: http://davidbarrie.typepad.com
Mail: david@davidbarrie.net