Results for the tag: technology

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  by Lenora

  Future of Construction Like The World Depends On It (Part 2)

  Added by Lenora on June 26, 2017

  Last month’s blog post about Shaping the Future of Construction, led by the World Economic Forum and Boston Consulting Group, underlined the urgency of industry transformation in construction and engineering cited by this initiative. McKinsey’s work on Imagining construction’s digital future share many points, among which: Construction, infrastructure and real estate lag in integrating new operating disciplines…read more

  Tags: affordable housing, business models, Construction, innovation, technology No Comments »

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  by Lenora

  Investing in Low Carbon Urban Infrastructure: Tell Me More

  Added by Lenora on April 27, 2017

  Although this site focuses on housing investments, one of the big themes on DevelopingSmartCities.org is private investment in cities’ low carbon transformation. Many of these infrastructure investments in sectors like transportation, water and energy overlap with the built environment and housing. Earlier this month, CDP and C40 Cities released The Low Carbon Investment Landscape in C40 Cities to…read more

  Tags: business models, development finance institutions, energy efficiency, financial innovation, sustainability, sustainable cities, technology, urban investment No Comments »

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  by Lenora

  Technology and the Missing Housing Industry: Interview with WikiHouse’s Alastair Parvin

  Added by Lenora on August 14, 2016

  I was excited to speak to Alastair Parvin, Cofounder of the WikiHouse Foundation, at the World Bank’s Global Housing Finance Conference at the end of May in Washington, DC. Parvin is the rare urban visionary who speaks clearly about removing roadblocks in the housing economy and ramping up the missing “long tail” of the housing economy.* What’s the…read more

  Tags: affordable housing, alternative building technologies, citizen sector, financial innovation, green bonds, housing finance, participatory development, real estate development, technology No Comments »

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  by Lenora

  Unlocking Strategic Housing Innovation

  Added by Lenora on July 17, 2016

  Is affordable housing innovation for sustainable and inclusive communities happening? Yes, absolutely, but scaling, replicating and financing remain a challenge. That was the takeaway from the 2016 Strategic Innovation Summit on Affordable Communities Everywhere, held by the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard (TECH) with support from Barcelona Housing Systems, where I attended and keynoted. The…read more

  Tags: affordable housing, business models, community development, community participation, Construction, construction finance, energy efficiency, green building, green design, green housing, innovation, modular construction, real estate development, social housing, technology No Comments »

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  by Lenora

  The Big Bang for Cities: Four Themes That Drove An Urban 2015

  Added by Lenora on December 30, 2015

  Last year, 2015, was the Big Bang for cities. The Ted Talk-listening “popular intelligentsia” was suddenly as fascinated by the best managed and most sustainable cities as the most insecure and exposed. Whether stories of rapid, chaotic urban growth in developing economies or the path to developing dynamic, inclusive, sustainable and resilient cities, urbanization has…read more

  Tags: accelerators, architecture, business models, CAHF, climate change adaptation, climate change mitigation, climate resilience, community development, community participation, COP21, development finance institutions, EcoCasa, favela, financial innovation, green banks, green building, green design, green housing, IFC, inclusion, incubators, innovation, KfW, microfinance, MIT, MIT Media Lab, PACE, participatory development, real estate development, REIT, smart cities, social impact, sustainability, technology, urban development, urban investment, urban planning No Comments »

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  by Lenora

  Takeaways for Housing Innovators: Hardware vs Software Approaches to Smart Cities

  Added by Lenora on October 10, 2015

  The compulsion to re-everything cities runs through the popular discussion of the world’s newly emerging and exploding cities. Re-think, re-imagine and re-shape. Rehabilitation. Regeneration. Renaissance. These loaded words often embrace conflicting visions of the end goal, the plan for getting there and who benefits. Smart cities concepts mostly push infrastructure, basically “hardware” solutions, with limited…read more

  Tags: affordable housing, business models, community development, cooperative housing, earthquake resistant construction, formwork, housing finance, incremental housing, innovation, public policy, real estate development, social impact, technology No Comments »

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  by Lenora

  IFC’s EDGE: Products for the Housing Value Chain, Part 2

  Added by Lenora on May 6, 2015

  Continuing our last post, IFC’s EDGE software has gained traction quickly because it brings a range of real estate players to the table around green building. Even with a great tool like EDGE, how can an organization like the IFC drive adoption? They still have to disseminate the tool across users to strengthen the business and institutional landscape. No…read more

  Tags: affordable housing, building codes, certification, ecosystem, EDGE, energy efficiency, financial innovation, green bonds, green building, green mortgages, housing value chain, IDB, IFC, investment fund, KfW, real estate investment, software, technical assistance, technology, water efficiency No Comments »

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  by Lenora

  How is the IFC Energizing Green Housing? Prashant Kapoor Is On It, Part 1

  Added by Lenora on May 2, 2015

  The Developing Smart Cities site is increasingly driven by the manifesto to strengthen the links of the affordable housing ecosystem in emerging and developing markets – a topic that Debra Erb passionately wrote on recently. We were so impressed with how the EDGE software represents this mission that we decided to follow up on our…read more

  Tags: affordable housing, BRE, building codes, certification, development finance institutions, ecosystem, energy efficiency, glazing, green building, insulation, LEED, solar shading, sustainable design, technology, USGBC No Comments »

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  by Lenora

  Are Smart Cities Startups Focusing on Inclusion?

  Added by Lenora on April 12, 2015

  I’ve been impressed by the attention that startups in the smart cities space are starting to attract. In recent years, it seemed like, outside of the odd app contest in cities like New York, the concept of smart cities has been dominated by big companies with big infrastructure and software solutions. NYU’s Anthony Townsend wrote a book (SMART CITIES: Big Data, Civic…read more

  Tags: Construction, real estate development, smart cities, technology No Comments »

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  by Debra Erb

  Why Don’t We Have More Affordable Housing Developers? What Can We Do?

  Added by Debra Erb on February 1, 2015

  Debra Erb, Managing Director of Housing Programs and SME Finance at the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) spoke at the African Union for Housing Finance 30th anniversary general meeting in Cape Town, whose theme was The Next Frontier in Affordable Housing: Alternative Building Technologies. Developing Smart Cities asked her to revisit the talk for us….read more

  Tags: affordable housing, AUHF Conference 2014, business models, construction finance, ecosystem, housing finance, infrastructure, innovation, land, low-cost housing, real estate development, real estate investment, stakeholder analysis, sustainability, technology No Comments »