We cannot think about real estate as we used to, since we need to live within the restrictions of our planet. What if we adopted the thinking from consumer-led industries into city development? What would this mean to the liveability of our cities?
Listen to the full interview as a podcast:
Sami Lankiniemi has been at the forefront of sustainable real estate. With an extensive background in sustainability, green building, and the digitalization of the built environment, his current role as the Head of Innovation at Sitowise provides him with a platform to put his expertise to use in building a more sustainable built environment.
Lankiniemi’s dedication to sustainable practices and his innovative approach to urban development has positioned him as a visionary in the realm of eco-friendly and forward-thinking real estate initiatives. In this podcast episode Natalia and Sami delve into the digital transformation of real estate.
Over the past decade, the real estate industry has undergone a significant transformation.
“When I started 10 years ago at the Green Building Council Finland, people were quick to brush sustainability talk off as idealistic and naive. But now, sustainability is driving companies forward. We are seeing new business models and services catering to the ever evolving sustainability needs”, Lankiniemi says.
Lankiniemi emphasizes that the industry is not just adapting but thriving in this new landscape. The integration of sustainable architecture, smart buildings, and data-driven approaches represent key aspects of this shift.
“It’s essential for real estate professionals to harness the potential of digital tools for creating a more environmentally conscious and technologically advanced field”, he says.
These digital advancements aren’t solely about boosting efficiency. Instead, they underscore the prioritization of sustainability within real estate practices. As the industry continues to evolve, the integration of digital solutions is driving a fundamental shift toward more environmentally responsible and technologically advanced approaches in real estate development.
Lankiniemi passionately advocates for sustainable practices in urban development, emphasizing the need to create eco-friendly and energy-efficient urban spaces.
“We cannot think about housing or space in that sense anymore because we need to live within the restrictions of our planet”, he says.
Instead, the real estate industry must integrate more environmentally conscious architecture and urban planning. Lankiniemi believes that sustainable design principles are essential for ensuring the longevity and well-being of urban communities.
“The built environment has lost the business that we had. We have been so accustomed to concentrating on the production side of things, such as efficiency and productivity, and we would gain a lot by shifting our thinking more towards consumption and value generation – we should remember the end consumers, which for our industry are people, the citizens. It’s all of us.”
Since the past few years, the real estate industry has been shifting focus toward more environmentally responsible and community-centric design practices
Lankiniemi underscores the critical role of community engagement and collaboration in urban development, and emphasizes the need for public involvement and stakeholder participation in decision-making processes.
“When urban planning starts, the idea is to look into new locations and expand the city and forecast who’s going to be living there. It takes a lot of time to pass the whole plan, and it goes through a lot of cycles”, he states.
Lankiniemi advocates for a community-centric approach in urban planning, where the voices and preferences of residents are integrated into the development process. He highlights the significance of understanding the context and concept of community decisions.
“Leave room for understanding the context of those decisions. It’s so fast that you kind of don’t understand the repercussions of your decisions when you’re one person or one team in that command chain”, he says.
Cities contain a huge amount of information and data, which, however, is at times stored in a fragmented form or simply outdated. Meanwhile, the platforms that combine artificial intelligence and data can empower people and provide new information for real estate developers.
Smart cities comprise a lot more than just digital solutions in citizens’ and businesses’ daily lives. They are liveable and sustainable cities with happy citizens. Data helps the city decision-makers to to build smart cities, and in this blog, we explain how.
Are smart cities “smart”? Maybe our cities are rather “social” than “smart”. What do you think? Juhana Rantavuori, photo credit: Jan Ahlstedt Juhana Rantavuori is
