IAARA::Specialized Course on the Role of Real Estate Management in Urban Development Municipalities

Peter Dent
Head of Department of Real Estate and Construction Management
Introduction to Efficient Real Estate Management
Real estate management should be viewed from the perspective of its strategic, tactical and operational contribution to an organisation’s activities. At the strategic level, real estate needs to satisfy overall organisational goals at appropriate levels of cost and maximise value and contribution. Tactically, the organisation needs to identify resources and commit those resources to the tasks that go to make up the organisation’s total activity. Finally, the operational level involves day-to-day activities necessary to maintain the value of the real estate asset. Guidelines specifically for local authorities in the UK have moved from a focus on encouraging the development of processes for overall asset management to a more strategic aim seeking to foster a greater emphasis on achievement, in terms of outputs (e.g. improved property assets) and outcomes (e.g. better achievement of corporate objectives and more efficient and effective services to the public resulting from improved property assets).

Richard Grover
Principle Lecturer, Oxford Brookes University
Private Sector Involvement in the Managment and Development of Municipal Assets
Municipalities around the world are faced with two particular problems when seeking to develop the potential of their assets. Firstly, they are usually short of finances. It is difficult to justify money being spent on the development of assets when there are so many demands for improvements in public services. Secondly, they are often short of experience as to how to undertake commercial development and are unused to extracting the efficiencies that the private sector needs to make in order to produce a profit. For these reasons municipalities may become involved with the private sector to develop their assets. The presentation examines three types of involvement between municipalities and the private sector and the advantages and disadvantages that come from them.
Public Private Partnerships where a private sector partner develops or upgrades an asset in return for a rental from the public body. The private sector can also manage the asset or use it to generate public services on behalf of the public body.
Commercial partnerships where the municipality contributes an asset, such as land, and the private sector contributes know how and finance. The asset is typically leased by the municipality to the private partner, who develops it. The lease terms enable both parties to share in the profits.
Planning gain. When consent is given by a municipality to a private developer for a development, this has the effect of increasing the value of the land. Planning gain is a device by which the municipality requires a contribution from the developer out of this enhancement, for example, investment in infrastructure.

Peter Jones
Resources Directorate Birmingham City Council
Utilising Public Real Estate Stock to Regenerate the City Economy
This presentation will provide a detailed examination of the impact of economic globalisation on the economy of Birmingham. It will show that the process led to a major restructuring of the economy away from old heavy industries and car manufacturing to one based on services. This had led to major degradation of large areas of the city and initially caused large numbers of unemployment. The e presentation will then show how the city council addressed the situation through major property led redevelopment schemes utilising both partnership building with the private sector and relying on both public and private land and property resources. This approach not only allowed the physical redevelopment of major dilapidated parts of Birmingham but also facilitated the economic restructuring in the face of decline of manufacturing to attract new investment in financial and retail services

Rajat Gupta
Senior Lecturer, Oxford Brookes University
Managing Energy-Related Carbon Emissions From the Existing Building Stock Using GIS-Based Modelling
The building sector is one of the major consumers of energy in the world, and produces almost half the carbon emissions in developed countries. According to a report in “The 2nd conference of Fuel Conservation in Buildings” in Tehran (2003), the amount of energy consumed in buildings in Iran is equal to 30% of annual oil income (equivalent to US$19 Billion), with 50% of this being wasted.
This presentation describes an award-winning GIS-based domestic energy, carbon-counting and carbon-reduction model called DECoRuM® with the capabilities to evaluate energy consumption in, and CO2 emission reductions from, the housing stock, and the cost of a range of measures to reduce both. It was developed, demonstrated and validated by Dr Rajat Gupta based in the Department of Architecture at Oxford Brookes University. The methodology underpinning the model has been published in academic papers and reported widely in newspapers as well. In December 2006, DECoRuM received the RIBA President’s medal for outstanding research.
DECoRuM estimates current energy-related CO2 emissions from existing UK dwellings, aggregating them to a street, district, and city level. This enables it to evaluate the potential and financial costs for domestic CO2 emission reductions by deploying a whole range of best practice energy efficiency measures, low carbon systems and renewable energy technologies on an urban scale. Unlike traditional carbon calculators the model offers the opportunity to highlight not only individual problems, but problem areas. It is not designed to ‘name and shame’ homeowners but offer them and planners a clear picture of the issue and a strong indication of the amount of energy, and money that can be saved.
Once above the level of the individual home, the model develops housing stock energy databases containing a unique record for every dwelling in the stock, with details of its energy rating. Furthermore the variable scale of the model gives local authorities the ability to identify, and thus tackle, pollution hotspots. Individual CO2 reduction measures can then be deployed and the outcome shown to determine the most cost effective package for emission reductions. This can then help planners to manage domestic carbon emissions by developing and reviewing their energy efficiency strategy, setting achievable targets for improvement, and monitoring the reductions achieved.As the issue of climate change becomes increasingly worrisome with the recent floods in UK and heat waves in mainland Europe, we all must accept our responsibility in the emission of CO2. DECoRuM puts energy efficiency on the map, giving individuals, architects and local authorities a GIS-based toolkit to count, cost and reduce domestic carbon emissions. The model has proved that reducing household carbon emissions requires little, if any, sacrifice in our standard of living and actually leads to a reduction in our cost of living

Phil Turner
Senior Lecturer, Oxford Brookes University
Managing Historic/Cultural Property Stock as a Tool for Cultural Regeneration
Utilising the case study of Oxford Castle this presentation looks at laws surrounding protection of historic buildings and how when they fall into disuse we try to find a suitable alternative. The lecture will consider that while many of our old castles belong to local authorities they simply don't have the vast sums of money needed to restore and maintain them. As a result they form partnerships with private developers who fund these projects in return for some sort of ' planning gain' ie, commercial development. The presentation will consider how the Castle is pivotal to the eventual redevelopment of the whole of the Oxford West End and how realisation of the plan is dependent on private investment