44
GERMANY
ISSUE
I
MIPIM 2017
sights on B-locations because the A-loca-
tions are increasingly overheating.
NUREMBERG: MEASURES FOR DIGITAL
STRUCTURAL CHANGE
After participating
inMIPIM in various constellations for the
past ten years, most recently with guest
status, now in 2017 Nuremberg is filling
the empty slot in the joint German booth.
“The city of Nuremberg will be present for
the tenth time as an exhibitor, this time in
the Germany Pavilion for Cities and Re-
gions,” says economic promoter Susanne
Hoffmann on the increased presence.
“This business location offers the best
surrounding conditions for digitalization
of various business sectors,” says Dr. Mi-
chael Fraas, economic advisor of the city
of Nuremberg. As part of the commercial
spacemarketing, the city wants to be ready
for Living and Working 4.0 and for inves-
tors. The first step on this digitalization
agenda is to expand broadband coverage.
BIM AS TOPIC FOR THE FUTURE
In the
construction industry, digitalization has
been a top priority at Drees & Sommer for
a long time. “It is particularly important
for us to meet investors who are inter-
ested in future-oriented topics such as
Building Information Modeling (BIM),
Smart Buildings or Blue City,” says Steffen
Szeidl, Member of the Boards of Drees &
Sommer Group.
“Our goal is to become the first digital
real estate asset and investment manager,”
states Commerz Real spokesmanGerd Jo-
hannsen, commenting on the first step in
the founding of their own “Digital-Werk”
last year. Its tasks include optimizing
business models, automating all business
processes and making them as flexible as
possible and using data more effectively
and profitably.
Strabag Real Estate is represented by
booth partnerships, for example, with the
cities of Hamburg, Cologne, Munich and
Stuttgart. “Our primary goal is to make
new contacts and to maintain existing
ones at the fair, also with an eye on our
activities in Poland and Rumania,” says
Head of Marketing Timo Haep.
What’s about the feeling if you look to
the dates and facts of MIPIM in 2017?
2017 will be a challenging year given the
global economic and political context with
opportunities to identify in the real estate
pool. Since MIPIM’s creation in 1990,
we have had many up and downs (the
Gulf War, the oil crisis’s or the crash in
2008), but those MIPIM gatherings were
the most crucial as it was the moment for
professionals to discuss and share their
points of view and shed new light on the
global context and how to draw opportu-
nities from it. There will be a lot to debate,
discuss and digest at MIPIM 2017 and we
are putting all of our energy into prepar-
ing the best meeting place possible for our
global real estate professionals who will be
attending to interact and network and get
those key discussions flowing.
I am personally very eager to speak to
some of the 1,000 US delegates and 5,000
UK delegates that will be attending this
year to get their own point of view about
how the situations are unfolding in the
respective countries.
What is to say about the new program
and special themes/focus?
The theme
of MIPIM 2017 (a “New Deal for Real
Estate”) sets the tone for those key global
challenges that will impact the real estate
sector in the coming years. According to
me, there are four key challenges and the
first of those is urban planning. In the
coming years 8.3 billion people will live on
earth and over 60 percent of the popula-
tion will live in cities. Howwill this impact
New Deal is Key for
Global Challenges
Interview with
Filippo Rean
, Head of the Real Estate
Division (MIPIM & MAPIC event portfolios)
Photo: Reed Midem
the design and construction of tomorrow’s
cities? Next comes efficiency of resources:
how will future real estate projects be able
to take into account the need to monitor
and save resources, when energy demands
will grow 40 percent and half the world’s
population will be living in areas of high
water stress? Global economic and polit-
ical power shifts is another main global
challenge. Taking into account Brexit and
US, French, German and Italian elections
etc., how will these changes in power
ricochet off the sector and impact on in-
vestment, governance and global cooper-
ation? The fourth main global challenge
is digitalization. Very soon, over 1 trillion
objects will be connected to the internet
and all the data collected from the users
and the buildings will clearly modify the
way real estate professionals are working.
One leading theme will be the digital
revolution?
Digitalization is amajor chal-
lenge for the real estate industry as it in-
volves many aspects of the business, from
investment to the building itself passing
by the asset management. All these aspects
will be treated at MIPIM with, for exam-
ple, a conference session dedicated to new
financing models such as green bonds,
blockchain, bitcoin and crowdfunding.
Smart buildings and internet-of-things is
also of growing importance to the sector.
We have a number of exhibitors from this
field, including Honeywell, Embix, Dis-
tech Controls, Schindler and Schneider
Electric, who will be showcasing their
solutions in the MIPIM Innovation Fo-
«
Hans-Jörg Werth, Scheeßel
