The report contends that as the real estate industry catches up in technology, it could bridge the gap between smart city solutions and the physical spaces where people work, live and play.

Collating insights from 30 experts from technology, real estate and government, it reveals the challenges that face the growing number of smart cities in Asia Pacific and around the world. The research also highlights the opportunity for a more human-centred approach to smart city development, which promotes inclusiveness, efficiency, sustainability and transparency.

“Cities are unleashing technologies such as the internet of things and artificial intelligence to solve some of the pressing problems of urbanisation – whether it’s traffic or waste disposal or public safety,” said Jeremy Kelly, director of global research at JLL.

“This has the potential to change the way we live and work, as well as how we interact with the buildings and infrastructure in our cities. These innovations hold particular promise in Asia Pacific where city populations are growing rapidly.”

Thailand aims to develop 60 smart cities in 30 provinces between 2020 and 2021 and to increase that to 100 smart cities nationwide by 2022. China has more than 500 smart cities in the pipeline, while the India government has a five-year plan for the development of 100 smart cities between 2017 and 2022. Likewise, Singapore is progressing its “Smart Nation” vision launched in 2014, and in 2018 a US$23 million (Bt702 million) Asean-Australian investment fund was announced to support smart cities in Southeast Asia.

However, while more than 1,000 smart city initiatives have been announced around the world, only 15 have a comprehensive strategy that includes detailed targets. Of these, only eight offer concrete plans ready for implementation. The report examines the reasons why so many smart city projects have been slow to take off.

Bureaucracy is one key stumbling block. Given that cities are large and complex, smart city initiatives can succeed only if governments are open to experimentation and willing to invest time and resources in learning from missteps.

“To fulfil the promise of smart cities, we must start focusing less on the technology and more on how to use it to make lives better for people. We believe real estate can be a connector between the people who are the lifeblood of cities and the digital infrastructure that is increasingly powering our urban environments. It’s time for the real estate industry to step up,” added Kelly.

While often viewed as a technological laggard, the real estate industry is now approaching a tipping point with the rapid growth of proptech, or the convergence of property and technology. Spurred by the momentum of smart city technologies, proptech offers tangible, near-term solutions to urban development problems, improving cities’ sustainability, decision-making capabilities and transparency. The JLL report identifies several areas where proptech can make such impact. From the construction phase to facility management, proptech brings tangible benefits in the form of improved efficiency for building occupiers and enhanced value for investors.

“Our research shows that real estate is a crucial element in the future of smart cities and our clients are asking us how they can ensure the buildings they occupy or invest in are future-ready,” said Dr Megan Walters, head of Asia Pacific research at JLL. “We believe that by creating precincts that combine technology and human experience, they will operate more efficiently for occupiers, and can deliver a premium for investors due to lower operating costs and better yields.”

“Our presales recorded high growth in the second quarter of this year thanks to the demand to buy our latest condominium project, the Origin Ram 209 Interchange, which succeeded in achieving sales of up to 70 per cent after the launch to the market last week,” the company’s chief executive officer Peerapong Charon-Eak said on Monday.

Meanwhile, the company plans to launch six new residential projects worth Bt8.1 billion in the third quarter of this year, as it drives toward its goal of presales totalling Bt28 billion by year’s end, he said.

The new projects will locate near Rangsit, Vibhavadee, Rama 5, Petchakasem, Ladprao-Seri Thai and Bangna. They offer price ranges between Bt2 million and Bt30 million per unit.

They will be a part of boosting SC Asset’s presales to their Bt19 billion goal for year’s end.

Currently, the company has 46 projects worth Bt37 billion for sale in the market, of which 37 projects are single detached houses and townhouses, along with nine condominium projects, the release said.

“Technology will provide all that people need, and will especially meet the differing demands of different customers,” said John Zealley, Accenture Group’s senior managing director and global lead for consumer goods and services.

“Artificial intelligence or AI will learn the personal needs of each |person and design things that match their unique demands, rather than [the historical trend of marketing] mass products,” Zealley said recently.

AI will provide more services for people by doing anything that is needed in order to serve their demand. For example, the AI in a “smart residence” will manage the electricity in the unit, turning it on and off, as set up by the resident on a timer system. As well, home electricity or the air conditioner could be turned on or off through their smartphone before the resident returns home.

Digital technology and AI also allow for monitoring children and their grandparents at home to ensure they are not in need of assistance. The technology could directly contact the hospital from the office when a family member has an accident at home, Zealley added.

A technological shift from 4G to 5G will also allow for changes to people’s lifestyles, and the adoption of “smart-living solutions” as ever-more facilities – both inside the home and outside – are linked in real time.

According to Mats Granryd, the director-general of GSMA, which |represents the interest of mobile |operators worldwide, 5G connections will account for 15 per cent of the global total by 2025. 5G will make up around 30 per cent of connections in China and Europe markets, and around half of the total in the US.

“The arrival of 5G forms a major part of the world’s move towards an era of intelligent connectivity,” he told the Mobile World Congress 2019 (MWC2019) held in Barcelona early this year. “While 5G will transform |businesses and provide an array of exciting new services, mobile |technology is also helping to close the connectivity gap. We will connect more than a billion new people to the mobile internet over the next few years.”

Granryd forecast that 5G would contribute US$2.2 trillion (Bt69.7 trillion) to the global economy over the next 15 years, with key sectors such as manufacturing, utilities and professional and financial services benefiting the most from the new technology. GSMA has calculated that mobile operators worldwide are currently investing around $160 billion (Bt5 trillion) per year on expanding and upgrading their networks, and the Chinese giant Huawei Technologies Co is among the strongest.

A Huawei 5G research and |development expert said the |technology will change people’s lifestyles as it will be easier to use, run in real-time, and so speed up the |global economy. For example, medical doctors could provide a real-time consultation or treatment with their patients through a 5G system, speeding up their work and making better use of Big Data than is the case with 4G, Granryd said.

The advancement will also help businesses to summarise Big Data to serve their specific needs. For |example, 5G technology could help the agricultural sector such as fish farms to manage their operations through monitoring and providing real-time information.

“5G is a new technology that |provides more convenience for |people’s lives than 4G,” said Granryd.

With the move to incorporate technology ever deeper into people’s lives, it is being tasked to help develop |residential and living units for people. The development industry is moving toward smart residences that use information technology, AI, and digital technology to both manage the residential unit and improve the residents’ quality of life.

To meet customer demand, property firms will improve their residential units by incorporating in a wide range of technology.

“The smart resident will be the next step to develop residential units in the coming years,” the expert said.

“With my experience of over 20 years in the property sector, we are seeing more change in customers’ demands and that is the main reason that property firms have to change their business model and products to cater to all the different demands,” chief executive officer and managing director of LPN Development Plc, Opas Sripayak, said in a recent interview with The Nation.

Much has changed since 1997, with homebuyers today focusing on location and facilities that meet their demands. Today, the country has developed a mass-transit system, a major road network and a rail system nationwide. In Bangkok, the rail system allows people to quickly and easily move across large distances through the city, and has shifted many people’s choice of residence from low-rise, including detached homes and townhouses, to |condominiums.

With the country now moving to a digital economy, along with a sharing economy, and with the population rapidly becoming an ageing society, the large societal shifts also mean big changes are coming for developers of both residential and commercial |buildings.

“The young generation, who will be our customers in the next five to 10 years from now, are [likely to] change their lifestyle from owning residential or other assets by themselves to moving their residences [to live] nationwide or overseas. This means they do not need to buy to own a residence, but they will need a residence to rent rather than to buy their own residence,” he said.

Residences in the future will be developed to serve both investors who buy to rent out, and also for developers to directly rent to tenants, Opas said.

Meanwhile, office buildings and |hospitality buildings must also change to serve the changes in customers’ behaviour.

Currently, the younger generation and some other workers are changing their lifestyle to work from home or at co-working spaces rather than at an employer’s offices.

The shift is strongest for those working in small and medium-sized enterprises and startup businesses, but multinational firms are also changing their business culture to open up the choice for their staff to work from outside the office. Most staff today can be in direct contact anytime and anywhere due to the digital shift in the country’s communication and markets and the way that business is done.

“Currently, the country is moving to a sharing economy where digital will disrupt everything in our previous way of life. This is also disruptive for property developers as they move from constructors of buildings to transforming into providers of living solutions through residential services to serve [the totality of] customer demand,” Sansiri Plc president Srettha Thavisin said in a recent interview with The Nation.

He added that the residential design for all new projects now and in the future must include more shared space for the customers along with more service solutions to meet customers’ demands.

“In my view, the future will not remain similar to today, but the current

trend shows us that it will move to offering more services to customers who buying residences. They will need not only the residence and its facilities, but also more services from developers such as services that match their lifestyle including information technology, security systems, logistics systems, etc,” said Srettha.

Today’s property developers and those in the near future must change their business model to develop residences and facilities to serve all people’s changing lifestyles, by using digital technology to satisfy everyone’s demands, he said.

Catering to ageing population

Meanwhile, the country is undergoing another major shift, to an ageing society, according to the latest research by the National Economic and Social Development Council. Thailand will become a full-fledged ageing society in 2021 when the number of its senior citizens is expected to reach 13.1 million or 20 per cent of the total population.

With the number of elderly people rapidly rising in the country, residential and other buildings must be developed to serve their needs.

“Our residential design is concerned with meeting the needs of all generations of the family – kids, teenagers, working members and senior members,” said Grand Bangkok Boulevard chief executive officer Nuttaphong Kunakornwong.

“Our residential property uses raw construction materials that can be used by senior members. For example, we built a ramp for moving a wheelchair between a parked car and the 90-centimetre-wide entrance to the bedroom on the ground floor of our residential project.”

Nuttaphong said that this was the best approach to developing residential buildings, and other construction, nationwide at this time, and in the near future, in order to improve people’s quality of life.

Meanwhile, concern about the environment must be incorporated in the design concept of all existing buildings and for the construction of new buildings today and tomorrow, in order to ensure the well-being of people in society, Assoc Professor Dr Singh Intrachooto, head of Kasetsart University’s Creative Centre for Ecodesign and Scrap Lab, said.

Singh said the country has seeing an increase in raw construction designed under the “green” concept. This will support property firms choosing to develop buildings that are less harmful to the environment, and improve the well-being of people who live, work or use them.

Equally important is to create “green” and “healthy” designs in the project development to ensure a better quality of life for residents.

To achieve a healthier living environment, an interior designer should observe people’s behaviours, then research and develop green and non-toxic construction materials for the safety of all residents in a building, regardless of their ages.

“Wellness is not easy to achieve, but it is the way to improve the quality of life in this time and the near future,” Singh said.

Developers of residential and commercial buildings need to increasingly be concerned about people’s quality of life, and also match the changes underway in people’s behaviour, by incorporating digital technology to serve customer demand, agreed all of the property gurus.