The Counselors of Real Estate has released the Top Ten Issues Impacting Real Estate: 
1. Infrastructure; 
2. Housing; 
3. Weather; 
4. Technology; 
5. Recession; 
6. Partisanship; 
7. Capital markets; 
8. Migration; 
9. Volatility; and 
10. Debt levels. 

For real estate professionals in commercial real estate operating in private investment markets, nonprofit institutional and public sectors - the built environment results increasingly from public private partnerships (PPP). PPP’s are essential integrations of the deal, the project, the plan. Nothing new! With greater vigor, rigor, transparency, and benefits. More negotiable and more realistic. Do come to the table. Not just online.

Infrastructure spending will further highlight the logic and common sense of PPP. Doing the deal, today even more so, clearly involves access, mobility, resilience, energy, environment which all are best with integration, and fewer boundary’s. Building the sustainable cities of tomorrow requires planning for them today and there are many seats at the table. Entertainment and experience are demonstrated objectives of society, humanity! Constituencies. Just do it. Smart cities, towns and spaces have embraced these principals resoundingly. What’s good for the project should be good for the community and vice versa.

The Counselors of Real Estate meet November 6-9 in Nashville to continue the dialogue, the challenges and the solutions. Congestion, global markets, data destruction and artificial intelligence, and Nashville’s secrets are on the agenda. Panels will include participants from the public, private and nonprofit sectors. The counselors will certainly drill down on these top 10 issues in greater detail and provide not just a clearer how and why, but also what can be done to make progress on these issues.

Membership in the counselors already includes a representative cohort from all the various property and user sectors. The Urban Land Institute, London-based Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, and the honorary land economics society Lambda Alpha International, among other organizations, also include professional cohorts from all property related sectors. More than just more. These PPP’s are front and center with common ground. Just do it! Do it better! Build more, build better, build smarter.

As we know it, the built environment is sunsetting. Change is dramatic and challenging the real estate profession. Mobility, entertainment, live/work, resilience and climate change. Not just bricks and mortar. Life style and survival. Technology is an overlay. 

All challenges are opportunities for success and innovation. The hope is that overcoming challenges make our cities better and stronger. Enjoy the summer months and keep your ear to the ground!

David Kirk, CRE, MAI, FRICS, is principal and founder of Kirk & Company, Real Estate Counselors, Boston.