Concrete Analysis | Brace for Lego-style buildings with a 50-year life-cycle and other changes in the future of cities

As some of you may know, one of my roles is that of chairman of the Asia-Pacific region of the Urban Land Institute (ULI), an organisation which champions the optimum use of land and the sustainable planning and development of cities and communities for the benefit of present and future generations.

ULI has some 43,000 members worldwide, with 2,500 in the Asia-Pacific region, and its strengths are the multidisciplinary nature of its membership, covering all sectors of the built environment and real estate industries, and its ability to bring to bear best practice and international experience from around the world.

One of the challenges we as an industry face (and it is, of course, not just restricted to ULI) is the amount of innovation that is taking place, literally daily – some positive and some disruptive – and even more alarming in some cases is the pace and extent of such change. As a result, it is difficult to see or forecast even five or less years ahead with any degree of certainty.

Hence, I think the first new maxim has to be optimum flexibility in the way that we plan and design our buildings and structures for the future in that very often what we plan today will only come into use in four to five years’ time. This not only applies to the internal spaces that we are creating but also to the buildings themselves.

I talk often of a “Lego” regime with buildings capable of being dismantled and reassembled in different forms as youngsters do with their wooden blocks. While this might seem somewhat futuristic, conceptually we need to be able to accommodate as much change as possible. This will in turn need major updates to our planning regulations and our building codes which at the moment are far too prescriptive to deliver this new approach.