Intro strategy for Real Estate development of the city centre

Challenge:

The city centre required a new functional re-planning, a new mix of functions aligned to the development strategy as well as the current status of its development.

The client asked to expand the functional development of a targeted area of a few dozen of hectares in the city centre, taking under consideration its current status, results of socio-economic analysis, modern trends of city centres’ developments and best practices observed in the leading cities around the globe.

Approach:

Precise analysis, supported by detailed comparisons of good practices of actual sites coverage data from other cities.

The team of consultants delivered the following project scope:

• Creation of the social and economic diagnosis of the city and the region (regarding the investment attractiveness and social conditions, with the indication of most dangerous and impoverished areas as well as the analysis of functional interrelations with other urban areas).
• Creation of the diagnosis covering the state of social planning with the identification of current trends in urban area planning.
• Presentation of the best practices among European revitalization projects.
• List of strategic types of city centres, together with the assessment of their impact on the city centre, the entire city and nearby communes, including rebuilding of a railway station and its influence on the region’s development direction (all based on the benchmarking analysis).
• Indication of the target strategic type of city centre and a resulting target structure of functions as well as recommended forms of its execution.
• Indication of the potential sources of financing for the analysed functions.
• Graphic analysis of the map of functions’ structure.

For the external competencies some technical support was needed, however the dominant emphasis  was put on business advisory.

Value:

Fresh view on potential changes in the city structure leading to improved quality of living for citizens and tourists.

As the result of the completed work and the prepared documentation,  the client realised what the theoretical structure of functions should look like. This became the basis for the further strategic planning. The novelty in that project was that the functional analysis was not started by the urbanists, but by business comparison and benchmarkings of other city centres functional development coming from the cities that present high quality of life for its citizens and tourists.