The physical is not the digital. We mustn’t dismiss the differences between them

COMMENT The proliferation of data and the demand to utilise it to optimise design, decision-making, management and profit is by no means new, or unique to real estate and the built environment. This situation has arisen through a process of technology osmosis: from inside the real estate sector, technologies and techniques once confined to the analysis of retail assets have been extended into the wider built environment – enabled by decreases in the price of sensor and beacon technologies, and the ubiquity of GPS, near-total smartphone penetration, private wi-fi networks, contactless payment, and so on. From the outside, the real estate sector, like almost all parts of the economy, has been permeated by what is best described as dataism – a term coined by Yuval Noah Hariri to describe the belief that the world can be captured and processed as a series of dataflows. The result of technology osmosis is that as the supply of built environment data has increased, so too have expectations of what we should be doing with it. As a sector, we owe it to ourselves and to our customers – in the broadest sense – to not simply accept these expectations, but to interrogate them, and ask ourselves how and why we collect, analyse, and deploy data responsibly. This begins with understanding the implications of extending the data collection methods that arose in the retail sector to the wider built environment, and the risks of assuming that physical spaces can be monitored, analysed, designed in the same ways that digital spaces are. The physical is not the digital Despite the fact that boundaries between physical and digital worlds are increasingly blurring, it’s important to not dismiss the differences between the two. Firstly, targeted advertising or optimisation of user experience for individual(s) makes sense in the digital space. However, you cannot exponentially optimise an individual or group’s experience of a building or city, where space is shared and limited, without eventually negatively impacting that of another. Secondly, in the digital world, if a customer does not see the trade-off in consenting for a company to access personal data in exchange for access to specific sites or digital services, it is possible to simply opt out, but this isn’t really an option when it comes to the built environment, and the public realm in particular. Thirdly, there is a subjective, albeit seductive, case to be made that cities thrive when they allow and even encourage some friction. Context matters The twin pressures of the ubiquity of data and assumption of its inherent value have led many real estate companies to focus on portraying themselves and their assets as the “smartest” or “most connected”. Yet while individuals may be sanguine about the use of sensors to monitor desk occupancy in the office, they may be less so when it comes to using similar technologies in their apartment block, or across what many would assume to be public realm. And if the past few years have shown us anything, it is that attitudes towards technology and data are far from consistently positive or universally shared. The honeymoon phase of a warm, fuzzy world in which digital connections are guaranteed to build trust and proximity is gone. Attitudes towards data collection and sharing are changeable, both across legal jurisdictions and urban geographies, and between groups and individuals. This means there is no guarantee that our customers, whether office tenants or neighbourhoods and communities, will always embrace the smart and the connected. Move slow and fix things At the heart of many questions about real estate data use is the importance of transparency and trust. This sector has a reputation of being a laggard. Yet this is now a competitive advantage. By taking the time to learn from other sectors, we now have the ability to harness the opportunities that data and technology provide, and avoid the costly mistakes made by other industries. Getting data “wrong” harms reputation, and it harms balance sheets too – just look at the impact that the Cambridge Analytica scandal had on Facebook’s market capitalisation. Controversies around data in real estate have been smaller. However, they have demonstrated the need to not rush into deploying technology simply because it is available, but to focus on the trade-offs between positive impacts – such as improving energy efficiency or enhancing human experience – with the potential negative impacts. It is essential that when making these assessments, we work with our customers to build a shared understanding of what the responsible use of data looks like, and what frameworks can be put in place to guarantee it. It’s time to move slow and fix things, to spend less time worrying about being smart, but spend more time focusing on being responsible, reliable and respected. Kat Hanna is a masterplan strategist at Lendlease