5 real estate books to enjoy this winter
One of the most common new year’s resolutions is to read more books in the new year. In this week’s blog, Alexander Carlo and Nils Kok suggest 5 real estate related books for you to read in 2023. These books cover various topics, including, building certifications, geopolitics, and health.
Enjoy reading!
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‘The Great Indoors’, by Emily Anthes. It’s crazy to think that we spend approximately 90 percent of our time inside, without realizing how profoundly our lives are shaped by the indoor environment of the spaces that we are in.
The Great Indoors by Emily Anthes covers a wide range of topics on how buildings shape our lives. The topics include but are not limited to how microbes in our homes affect our immune system (e.g., ever thought about how many microbes there are in the showerhead you stand under each day?), how urban planning/architecture can help combat our increasingly sedentary lifestyle, and how better office layouts can expand your social network while at the same time improving your cognitive performance.
In chapter 6, the author makes a reference to inmates in prisons and further explains how much damage the wrong environment can do to a person. For example, have you ever wondered what effect isolation cells might have on prisoners? The findings mentioned in the book were similar to what we suspect many people felt during the lockdown measures during the pandemic.
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‘The Power of Geography: Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World’, by Tim Marshall. This book provides a deep dive into countries and areas that will play a major role in shaping the geopolitical situation of the next decades.
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‘The Water Will Come’, by Jeff Goodell. This book from 2017 pictures the future as a scene from the movie Waterworld, where Kevin Costner roams the earth on his makeshift sailing boat in search of dry land.
Based on scientifical facts and his experience from traveling across twelve countries, the author writes that major cities and coastal regions across the world might come under water. Furthermore, he provides examples of various engineering projects funded to mitigate the effects of sea level rise. The question is, will these projects be sufficient to keep current coastal areas and small island nations dry? This book is a must-read for anyone interested in how climate change, specifically sea level rise, will affect civilizations worldwide.
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‘The Great Age Reboot’ , by Michael Roizen and Peter Linneman. This book focuses on how increasing longevity will change demographics, and thereby the demand for real estate (and so many other things).
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‘From Green to ESG’ , by Matt Ellis. You cannot manage what you do not measure. Therefore hard data is needed to better the engagement success in the real estate sector. What are the limits of the current certification? Are they built-to-sell or built-to-solve? And how can the industry use objective ESG data?
In this book, Matt Ellis critically looks at the certification networks that grew up in the 1990s, such as Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Methodology (BREEAM). In essence, he questions whether these certifications have brought us as far as they can and provides his thoughts on how the world of commercial real estate should move forward on its path to more sustainability. It is a provocative book that questions whether certifications are indeed the tool the industry needs for the goal of making buildings more sustainable.
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