What is smart? A real estate introduction to cities and buildings in the digital era

Abstract

This article introduces the concepts of smart cities and smart buildings from the viewpoint of commercial real estate. It summarizes the current academic thinking on how the widespread implementation of digital technologies embodied by smart grids and digital skins impacts cities and buildings in two classic smart city models: ubiquitous city and augmented city. It then explores the consequences of these innovations on commercial real estate at both the city and building levels. In doing so, it presents the concept of a new “omni-use” property type whose characteristics derive from ubiquitous computing in smart urban environments. It also proposes guidelines for smart building scores to define a methodology relevant to the real estate sector and conducive to constructing price indices of smart buildings. It concludes by stressing the dominating role that technology will play in defining property heterogeneity in the digital era.