**3. Results**

In Ref. [4] globalization refers to expanded interdependencies and rates of transaction around the world. It is considered a set of issues: rates of international trade, global production, and commodity chains, flows of technology and intellectual property, flows of labor and laborers, cross-national investment patterns. Bardhan and Kroll [5] have analyzed the changes from local to the global shape of real estate considering the financial investment and demand sides. The factors investigated are the liberalizations of business licensing, taxation, and property ownership regulation in a general way to analyze the impact on the financial investment and demand sides. The impact on the financial investment side of these trends is connected in the same study with the search for a different risk profile that leads many investors to search for opportunities in the global world as well as the integration of global financial markets has a wider influence over the prices of the assets. The demand side is the second category investigated, corporate real estate, and the need for spaces for companies is the new demand opened up by globalization. The emerging middle class in Asia and

the mobile expatriate population boosting residential and real estate activity are lead also by offshoring, made possible by changes in labor costs and innovation in logistics. Pandemics have been a shock for the real estate market, changing the way we perceive the space in the cities and the relationship between commuting and working in presence at the traditional office. These issues enhanced the rapidly aging society issue in most developed countries where according to United Nations data the population over 65 is the most pervasive and dominant demographic trend, owing to declining fertility, increasing longevity, and the progression of large cohorts into older ages [6].

The transformations of society and the global economy influence changes in the built environment, which are rapid, frequent, and disruptive and have significant impacts on the built environment.

Below are some of the most important trends relating to the global economy, the environment, the diffusion of new technologies, consumption patterns, and the growing urbanization process. Reading and interpreting these phenomena, exactly as a modern industrial sector should do, leads to the identification of new and emerging needs that must be intercepted with suitable products and services. One of the main limitations of the traditional approach is that of producing without understanding the demand, believing that it is enough to produce to influence the demand to purchase. This dogma historically founded the real estate market and closed the world to innovation, especially that of the market.

The dynamics of change are so profound and disruptive that it is increasingly bringing to light the limitations and criticalities of the traditional approach, to the point of making it no longer suitable or reliable. The current scenario rewards operators who adopt an approach based on listening to stakeholders, systematic analysis, and interpretation of demand and therefore capable of creating innovative solutions, with a bottom-up "pull" logic, generated by demand, which meet the needs of target customers.

The construction/real estate sector is like other industrial sectors for which the possibility of survival is connected to the ability to innovate and give timely responses to the market with suitable products [7]. To this context, it is necessary to add a further element of complexity: the need to regenerate entire parts of our cities through interventions capable of integrating urban, technical, environmental, social, and economic aspects. This requires industrial culture and vision. The real estate operator has the role and responsibility of transforming the territory by offering integrated and complete solutions for functions and services, with an approach that can only be holistic.

We have observed that the prospects for change in the built environment must be analyzed in the light of the transformations of society and the economy, at a global level. The speed of changes, the need to make systems resilient to the unpredictable is increasingly pressing. New technologies have had an impact on the study of consumption patterns and on the study of the effects of the urbanization process in cities. The analysis of society leads to the interpretation of phenomena thanks also to the discovery of new needs that are impossible to read with traditional techniques. New real estate products must respond to new needs, must reach the market with a different class speed than in the past, and be ready to regenerate and change when the initial conditions change.

The life of businesses, which together with families represent a significant part of the demand for building products, tends to shorten. Developing countries, also thanks to technology, will change their propensity to purchase, in many cases filling the widespread difficulties of the middle classes of the Old Continent in

#### *Perspective Chapter: Minimizing Risk in Real Estate Development – An Industrial Approach DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112980*

maintaining their spending power, especially in the case of income from traditional industrial activities. It should be considered that for some of these workers, the choice of unstructured work also responds to specific needs for flexibility in working hours. In the United States, over 80% of multinationals have launched programs for employee mobility and flexible working, intercepting the growing needs of some employees [8].

This scenario leads to the growth of new requirements for buildings that must accommodate different economic activities; among all, the ability to adapt to rapid changes and flexibility that constitutes an important competitive factor for companies. It is projected that by 2030, when the world population is expected to reach approximately 8.3 billion people—four demographic trends will influence the national and international political-economic situation more than others. These trends are aging, a global change that will characterize both the West and, increasingly, most developing countries; a still significant—but decreasing—number of states and societies with a very young average age population; migratory flows, which will increasingly be a cross-border issue; growing urbanization, another global change, which will stimulate economic growth but could cause new tensions in relation to the scarcity of water and food resources. The behavior of the different generations toward work and relationships influences the movement of people and consequently impacts the need for office spaces and living spaces in the city center, as well as the sizing of physical and non-physical infrastructures.

Consumers' choices are strongly influenced by new forms of marketing that make data the real power. This data is often collected in the urban environment and in interactions with the city's smart applications, social platforms, and online shopping platforms. The transformation of society imposed by data also imprints different rhythms in the search for transparency in processes, and data that is easier to find and constant tracking of human activities makes it more difficult and expensive to pursue non-transparent goals. The circular economy [9] and the growing attention to social sustainability are two apparently distant trends but closely linked to the larger category of sustainability. The modern development competitions and tenders ask companies to attest to high levels standardized by certifying bodies in the fields of sustainability and a mechanism that has already been known in finance for years is also being implemented in the real estate world: social responsibility [10].

Cities are large consumers of resources and energy, returning waste, pollution in all its forms (atmospheric, light, noise…), and contributing to soil consumption, all of which impact the environment. Today urban centers are responsible for the consumption of three-quarters of natural resources and more than 70% of global CO2 emissions [8].

Appropriate policies and practices oriented toward environmental improvement in cities are essential. Investments in infrastructure and technologies useful for maximizing environmental benefits help achieve results quickly and improve people's quality of life. The city of the future must be smart, in the sense that it must be able to consume little, include all citizens, and propose models of sustainable growth and a circular economy.

The real estate development and urban regeneration initiatives must include the well-being of citizens who have developed a growing sensitivity, also generated by the availability of data and the results of scientific research. The scientific community is putting a lot of effort into researching the relationship between pollution, health, and the built environment, in terms of the use of cities and human behavior as an urban citizen. The conflict in Europe acted as an accelerator of the energy crisis, making the

whole of society aware that saving resources and conscious consumption of energy are a theme that involves everyone [8].

Many material resources will become increasingly difficult and more expensive to use and, above all, a large amount of these could be lost for future use [8]. In the UK, it is estimated that 37% of the materials used, equal to 158 million tons, are lost [4]. The European Commission, together with its members, is implementing solutions that encourage the circular economy. The built environment is an economically important sector, with the construction industry contributing, in Europe, on average, 5–13% of total gross value added (Eurostat, 2015) and which generates 812 million tons of waste at European level, a third of the total waste produced (Eurostat, 2012). In architecture competitions and international development tenders, attention to circularity is a fundamental requirement, and this pushes the construction sector to move toward virtuous behaviors with less impact on the environment, both from the design and construction phases.

The workplace is undergoing a radical transformation. Technological innovation, since the telephone, the fax, and the first Internet, has gone in the direction of avoiding physical movements and their evolution has been totally mobile work. Technologies have currently contributed to making physical presence in offices less and less necessary and making working on the move easier, but they weaken the boundary between free time and time dedicated to work, and companies are organizing themselves to meet the needs of workers to work on the move and often away from their offices.

The amount of data and information processed every day is growing exponentially [1]; the data constitutes a resource for companies capable of collecting data effectively and consistently with their processes and growth objectives. The data can give a competitive advantage and the best subjects being able to process information intelligently, making it the basis for goods and services. The availability of online information, despite problems related to ethics and the responsible use of personal information, influences marketing in order to provide increasingly personalized offers for the customer. Consumer behavior is accurately mapped, and neuro-targeting defines the possibility of precisely identifying what guides consumer choices [1]. Human intelligence (properly designed processes) and artificial intelligence are combined in the most advanced realities, and the processing capacity of mobile devices grows dramatically; in parallel, costs decrease [3]. Robotics, once the prerogative of the industrial world, is spreading to the final consumer market; automation, as well as the Internet of Things (IOT—Internet of Things), becomes common heritage (**Table 2**).

In order to make the relationship between trends, innovations, and solutions in real estate clear, let us consider 8 characteristics that make the real estate world particular and complex, as if they were 8 distinctive characteristics of an industrial environment to be taken into consideration if you want to undertake a project, which is also an analysis of the market. The study of the 8 characteristics exemplifies what was observed in the previous table and introduces the themes that will be the object of the conclusions of this contribution. It can be understood that each of the 8 characteristics reflects the evolution of a world that interacts with other areas of society and is influenced by them in terms of skills and technical innovations. The study of trends is intertwined with the need to analyze in advance what other technological and scientific fields propose and apply them in the real estate sector, investing in the training of those who must read the phenomena active in other fields and re-adapt them in real estate (**Table 3**).

*Perspective Chapter: Minimizing Risk in Real Estate Development – An Industrial Approach DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112980*


#### **Table 2.**

*Innovation, trends, and solutions in real estate (elaborated by the authors).*

#### *Innovation – Research and Development for Human, Economic and Institutional Growth*


#### **Table 3.**

*Eight characteristics of the complexity of the real estate world (elaborated by the authors).*
