University of Maryland proposes a "socially conscious" real estate program

According to The Diamondback, the student newspaper ("A proposed UMD real estate major aims for a socially conscious approach to development"). From the article:

Most real estate development education is focused just on the business, finance and investment side, and when one gets out into the industry, one finds that there’s really a lot more to real estate than just the finance part,” said Donald Linebaugh, interim dean of the architecture, planning and preservation school.

To address real estate’s many disciplines, students within the major must take nine elective credits unrelated to finance. The courses will cover a variety of subjects, including politics, communication and public policy.

Students will graduate with an understanding of historic preservation and urban planning — two areas that can clash with real estate development in large cities like Washington, D.C., Linebaugh said.

Teaching students to consider the impact of development at the community level, Linebaugh said, would help ease tensions between developers and urban planners. In addition, he said the approach would fulfill the school’s “quadruple bottom line”: building developments that are well-financed, socially and environmentally responsible and artfully designed.

“To be done in a way that improves communities, that makes better places,” Linebaugh said, “real estate really needs to be an integrated practice.”

Good luck.

cf. "The Need for Alternatives to the Nineteen Standard Real Estate Product Types," Christopher Leinberger, Places Journal 17:2 (2005)

As Leinberger said in an interview:

“Financiers like to finance commodities...”

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I joke that the more I learn about real estate development the more I become an intellectual Marxist. But while Marxism, in its focus on "capital" is great at understanding why things work the way they do, it's not so great for coming up with "solutions" in the context of capitalism.

A socially responsible real estate degree might include a couple of classes and more case studies on social housing, urban revitalization, preservation tax credits, and on housing in Singapore and Vienna, but it's not likely to change the fact that the financing and production system for real estate is global, and that certain neighborhoods, districts, and cities are integrated into that global system, and are impacted in ways that local policy, practice and actors have a difficult time countering.

For example, I just wrote about this in the context of the Parkdale neighborhood of Toronto (""Real estate capital reproduction of space" in the Parkdale neighborhood of Toronto") and LA's Filipinotown ("Historic Filipinotown, Los Angeles, as another example of real estate capital-driven arbitrage") and in the past about DC ("Exogenous market forces impact DC's housing market"), San Francisco ("Applying the super-gentrification thesis to San Francisco, Santa Monica, and other cities experiencing hyper-demand"), and culture spaces ("Dateline Los Angeles: BTMFBA & Transformational Projects Action Planning & arts-related community development corporations as an implementation mechanism to own property") among others.

Also see:

-- "Meet Wall Street's Rent Collector," Wall Street Journal
-- "Centuries-old Grosvenor Group deepens West Coast CRE roots," Real Estate News Exchange
-- "The 19 Building Types That Caused the Recession," CityLab

DO PEOPLE OBJECT TO DEVELOPMENT—OR MOSTLY DEVELOPERS MAKING MONEY? A UCLA study shows that a desire to punish developers drives anti-homebuilding attitudes.

Back decades ago when I was involved in business, I read the book How I Raised Myself From  Failure to Success In Selling by Frank Bettger.  (He sold insurance.)

He made the point that when people say "no" about buying, they have a "public" objection that sounds good, but a deeper objection that doesn't sound good that they don't want to state.  He always would say in response, "Yes, but what is the real reason you don't want to buy?" and that would usually lead into a deeper conversation.

“Regardless of whatever you’re selling, you must get to your prospect’s true objection.“ 

Sightline Institute calls our attention to this paper from researchers at UCLA, "Opposition to Development or Opposition to Developers? Survey Evidence from Los Angeles County on Attitudes towards New Housing."

It reminds me of the arguments made by Frank Bettger.

Granted, lots of new projects are poorly designed, don't fit in well with historic architecture, etc., but plenty of new projects are decent enough, providing new amenities that help to build stronger commercial districts and more interesting neighborhoods.

(The problems with many projects are really about failure of planning systems to provide better requirements and oversight to produce as a matter of routine better projects, instead of value engineered aesthetically-challenged projects.)

Excoriating developers is a form of misdirection and an attempt to hide self-interest.  I believe that people arguing against a project because greedy developers are the beneficiaries making profits, and benefit extra-normally is a form of mis-direction, of making palatable their opposition to projects, opposition that they would have anyway in all likelihood, even if the project was of high quality, even if it were constructed on a nonprofit basis.

I have to read the paper but I think that people seize on the “developers making money” trope merely as a way to criticize a project that they oppose generally, regardless of “developers making money.” This is capitalism after all.

1.  In LA, transit activists who say rail is for whites fought against Measure J calling it "corporate welfare” for the companies that design and build rail systems ("Foes of transit sales tax extension face uphill battle," Los Angeles Times; Bus Riders Union: Transit Justice, Not Corporate Welfare – No on Measure J," Streetsblog LA

Note the photo in this LA Times article, showing a “corporate welfare” check from LA MTA (Metro) to Parsons Brinckerhoff:

Lisa Korbatov, right, of Beverly Hills joins Rosa Miranda of the Bus Riders Union holding blank checks highlighting Measure J's corporate sponsors and beneficiaries during an October rally. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times / March 31, 2013)


2.  In Suburban Maryland outside DC, saying that the light rail program exists merely so “developers can make money” has been mentioned by opponents in letters to the editor in the Washington Post and the now no longer published Gazette suburban newspapers.

3. In my own community, “developers making money” has been used to criticize proposals for a multiunit housing building on the Metrorail station property, etc.


I think in all of these cases, concerns raised about developers, construction companies, and engineering consulting groups like Parsons making money is misdirection.

They’re just seizing on that trope to provide what they think is an argument that doesn’t appear to be self-serving.

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Years ago, Dan Malouff, an area resident, planner, and blogger made a good comment about opposition to conversion of no longer needed schools to housing or other worthy uses, when people would say no, they'd rather have a park--for example opposition to construction on a "park space" on Georgia Avenue ("DC residents: Plan to replace public housing will jeopardize popular popular," Washington Post), is ironic because the park replaced a demolished building and was specifically termed temporary.

He made the point that opponents to such adaptive reuse projects seize on a park use as the least worse alternative (not his language) to any form development whatsoever.

I think he's right.