Curated daily by our industry experts. Stay informed on how tech is shaping the real estate industry with these important headlines.
The Real Deal
Breather, a startup that rents office space by the day, has run out of air. The Montreal-based company plans to shutter more than 400 locations in the United States, Great Britain and Canada. In some cases, it will assign outposts to third parties, who will close them to repay the company’s creditors, the Globe and Mail reported.
Axios
While offices remain closed and travel isn’t an option, some companies are turning to virtual reality to bring employees together. Let’s face it: Slack sessions and Zoom happy hours can only go so far to promote company cohesion. VR can provide another outlet, even if the technology is still in its infancy.
Microsoft
The campus infrastructure team at the National University of Singapore was getting frustrated. The team wanted to refresh the university’s aging buildings and create a smart campus with connected, automated systems and a cooler, more comfortable outdoor environment. But they couldn’t find a way to make the dozens of standalone systems in the university’s 260 buildings — from air conditioning to elevators and fire protection — communicate with each other.
PlaceTech
Eindhoven, Manchester, Tallinn and Vilnius have been named Europe’s rising stars in the global tech city big league, according to research by Savills.
The Wall Street Journal
Money is pouring into exchange-traded funds that bill themselves as socially conscious. This year investors have put a record $27.4 billion into ETFs traded in U.S. markets that say they focus on environmental, social and corporate governance, or ESG, practices, according to data from FactSet, doubling the size of the sector.
Unacast
More than $1 billion in buying power has left #Tribeca #NYC since the pandemic began; half of that was in the first 60 days. #COVID19 ‘s $34 billion dollar bite out of the Big Apple — #locationdata #humanmobility #CRE
CNN
President-elect Joe Biden will name Gina McCarthy as his White House climate czar, a source familiar with the decision tells CNN, making the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency his top domestic climate coordinator. McCarthy, who currently serves as the head of the Natural Resources Defense Council, will lead Biden’s newly formed Office of Domestic Climate Policy, a source said. McCarthy served as the administrator of the EPA from 2013 to 2017 under President Barack Obama. …
The New York Times
If the United States wants to get serious about tackling climate change, the country will need to build a staggering amount of new energy infrastructure in just the next 10 years, laying down steel and concrete at a pace barely being contemplated today. That’s one conclusion from a major study released Tuesday by a team of energy experts at Princeton University, who set out several exhaustively detailed scenarios for how the country could slash its greenhouse gas emissions down to zero by 2050….
The Wall Street Journal
Baseball legend Alex Rodriguez is teaming with a Miami private-equity firm to invest more than a half-billion dollars in buying or developing hotels at a time when the industry has been ravaged by the pandemic. The former New York Yankee known as A-Rod said he is joining CGI Merchant Group in its new hotel investment fund, which the firm launched this month.
Axios
In less than a year, the pandemic shot us more than a decade ahead in the workplace transformation. The pandemic’s acceleration of telecommuting has changed much more than the way we attend meetings. We’ll see lasting impacts on company culture, the job market, demographics and cities.
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REGISTRATION IS OPEN FOR EUROPE 2030: SHAPING THE FUTURE OF THE BUILT WORLD IN LONDON ON JULY 1, 2025