Asia Real Estate Initiative

Asia is driving the global urban development boom. By 2025, more than half of the world’s urban population -- 2.5 billion people—will live in Asia. Given the vast social, economic, and environmental changes that have resulted, it is vital for the real estate industry to usher in a new era of interdisciplinary research, education, collaboration, and dialogue to meet the challenges of sustainability, technology and innovation.

To promote a sustainable and innovative approach to this growth, leadership at the MIT Center for Real Estate (MIT CRE) recently established the Asia Real Estate Initiative (AREI), which aims to become a platform for industry leaders, entrepreneurs, and the academic community to find solutions to the practical concerns of real estate development across these countries.

AREI will focus on three research themes:
(1) SUSTAINABILITY: Net Zero Emission new building and retrofit; Embodied carbon in construction; Healthy building; Housing Affordability
(2) TECHNOLOGY: Data Transparence and Real Estate ESG; Energy Efficiency with computational tool; Proptech
(3) INNOVATION: Building decarbonization  strategy; Building full life cycle integration; Innovative New Business Model

AREI also plans to collaborate with counterparts in Asia to contribute to research, education, and industry dialogue to meet the challenges of sustainable city-making across the continent and identify areas for innovation. Traditionally, real estate has been a very local business with a lengthy value chain, according to Zhengzhen Tan, director of AREI. Most developers focused their career on one particular product type in one particular regional market. AREI is working to change that dynamic.