Concept and market orientation; heart and soul of the urban master plan

Studying major urban developments worldwide, we find that successful projects have a clear and convincing concept in common. A concept strong enough to guide the planning and building process and attractive enough to tempt the market to invest. The question is how to generate such a concept. A second question concerns the role of market studies in this concept generation.

Our studies show that some major projects suffer from delays and lack of sales and even bankruptcy due to the lack of a concept for the envisaged urban development plan. Mistakes we found included:

absence of any concept, based on the idea that real estate will always sell;
lack of ambition: too much reliance on strategies from the past (“it worked before”);
no idea about the preferences of the demand side, no awareness of the competition;
a too rigid mono functional concept resulting in a ‘Blue Print’ plan;
a concept consisting of marketing slogans, which are expected to tempt investors;
failing relations (economic, social, transportation) with the surrounding built environment.