Redevco sets out plans for creation of liveable cities

Dutch company Redevco changed its mission and vision 18 months ago in order to demonstrate what can be done to make cities more liveable and sustainable.

“Obviously, a liveable city needs more than retail, so living is then a very logical choice,” said Redevco’s head of research and strategy Brigit Gerritse. “Because of urban sprawl and also the global need for affordable and attainable housing we thought this is a very important topic to make more impact.”

Following last year’s merger with Life Europe, Redevco Living was launched and the company has recently announced its target, developing 10,000 new homes.

“We now working on our own framework,” Gerritse told Real Asset Insight’s Richard Betts. “It’s not shocking, it’s not rocket science, but it’s really important to have our own story, our own narrative.” She added that everything the company does needs to be accountable in terms of its impact on nature and socially but it also has to be profitable.

“We’re setting KPIs and measuring what we do to see if there will be a net gain: So, how is it now?, how will it be better after we invest in it? Data is key.”

But brown-field development is the focus and green-field development has been ruled out. “That’s really important. We think the urban fabric has enough opportunities and it’s very important to leave nature as it is as much as possible. Even demolition is going to be difficult for us, so we really want to reuse existing buildings, turn them into mixed use, and that will make cities more vibrant and make it more intense and use buildings better.”

“It’s going to be a challenge, but we are going to show them that it’s possible,” she said.