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The development and economic action plan of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is truly remarkable. The planned economic development of the KSA, across every facet of society, via the Vision 2030 initiative will materially change how people live, consume and work within. The adoption of the world’s leading technologies across the full asset lifecycle and every sector of the built environment, underpins much of the delivery of the "giga-projects." From the mobility and accessibility of NEOM, to... Read More >

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This is a question we are often asked at The Proptech Connection (The PTC). The answer is simple, but also complex. Simply, it’s a catch all term that describes technology that impacts space. The complex answer is that its constantly changing, Read More >

The world has witnessed breathtaking advances in generative artificial intelligence (AI), with ChatGPT being one of the best known examples. To prevent harm and misuse of the technology, politicians are now considering regulating AI. Yet they Read More >

If increasingly panic-stricken headlines are to be believed, Artificial Intelligence poses an existential threat to humanity. The Prime Minister’s advisor on AI has warned that we have just two years to protect the species, and the Center Read More >

The recent news that BT would reduce its workforce by as many as 55,000 by 2030, including about 10,000 jobs replaced by artificial intelligence (AI), is part of a growing trend of job losses globally due to various forms of Read More >

There’s a fun game to be played with The New York Times’ coverage of British crime. It’s very simple and you can play along at home: how many paragraphs will it take the paper to tell you what the sympathetic victim of the legal Read More >

Not if it can generate income… Originally published July 2022. Mostly confined to cyberpunk and tech circles prior to 2021, the metaverse has since experienced breakout attention and entered the common vernacular. Not all of this has Read More >

How algorithm managers are taking over the office. The 1999 cult classic film Office Space depicts Peter’s dreary life as a cubicle-dwelling software engineer. Every Friday, Peter tries to avoid his boss and the dreaded words: “I’m Read More >

The social separation imposed by the pandemic led us to rely on technology to an extent we might never have imagined – from Teams and Zoom to online banking and vaccine status apps. Now, society faces an increasing number of decisions about Read More >

Climate change policy has entered a new era. The growing row between the United States and the European Union over the impacts of the new American green subsidy regime makes that all too clear. Yet in many ways, this story is ultimately Read More >

Ever since Elon Musk took Twitter private for US$44bn (£36bn), the debate around the social media platform has been vitriolic. There has been considerable angst about the direction Musk has been taking the company and his potential Read More >

Facebook may not be the original social media platform, but it has stood the test of time – until recently. Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, saw its value plummet by around $80bn (£69bn) in just one day Read More >

Valuable eyewitness accounts and raw data on human behavior, as well as a habitat for trolls What do a cybersecurity researcher building a system to generate alerts for detecting security threats and vulnerabilities, a wildfire Read More >

Here’s what that means for the company and its chances of success. Elon Musk has finally completed his US$44bn deal to acquire Twitter and take it private. The world’s richest man has already begun putting his imprint on the Read More >

Tech startups have been the British economic success story of the past decade. You can measure this success by the obvious metrics, like our stunning VC investment figures, or the less obvious ones, like the fact that more and more young, Read More >

Originally published June 2021. Prices are too high, availability too low, and the charging network is a dog’s breakfast. Hold your horses – or just get a bike. Tackling climate change makes fixing the pandemic “look easy”, Read More >

Originally published October 2019. Today is my little boy’s sixth birthday. And as I sit here waiting for him to get home from school, ready for the joy and the chaos of his party, I can’t help but smile at his presents and the ever-so Read More >

Why tech companies must address emissions caused by streaming and scrolling. Technology companies have been having a difficult year. The increased cost of living is turning people away from streaming, cryptocurrencies are faltering, Read More >

Kicking off a three-part series on proptech, in its very widest sense, let’s look back first of all to the Stone Age. Originally published December 2020. Urbanisation has been a key driver for technological breakthroughs. But what was Read More >

In a sector where outdated practices are a matter of life or death, providers need to value their buildings in a way that recognises health technology. Originally published June 2021. If 2020 taught us one thing, it’s that global Read More >

Originally published May 2019. If investor confidence was affected by the stock market slides of ‘Red October’, it seemed to have returned with the arrival of spring 2019 and a highly anticipated series of IPOs. Following Lyft’s Read More >

In a busy start to April 2022 for the British chancellor, Rishi Sunak announced his intention to make the UK a “global hub for cryptoassets technology”. Put simply, this means he wants the country to be an attractive place for Read More >

Originally published June 2019. One cynical – but useful – view of modern technology is that it allows us to play through the scams and mistakes of the last few millennia at warp speed. Bitcoin and associated cryptos have gone through Read More >

Originally published July 2019. That the robots are coming for all our jobs is entirely true. That this is a problem is less clear – after all, we’ve been trying to kill off jobs since we first started automating anything at all by Read More >

Nick Clegg is doing the same useful job for Mark Zuckerberg as he did for David Cameron’s Tories. In what many saw as a surprise move, Meta has promoted former UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg to its President of Global Read More >

Originally published February 2020. London has become synonymous with innovation, especially in the decade following the 2008 crash, which arguably marked the beginning of the city’s upward trajectory in tech. Buoyed by support from Read More >

Originally published March 2021. Proptech aims to disrupt in multiple ways, but equity markets may hold a clue to the future. This is the third article in our proptech series. The first looked at how to connect finance and property Read More >

Originally published September 2021. Without cyber insurance your business is vulnerable. An IT department received an email from their marketing team stating that they couldn’t access their files mounted on the file-share server. Read More >

For many involved in real estate, problems such as a lack of affordable housing or excessive contributions to global carbon emissions are now becoming obvious. Accordingly, two-thirds of real estate investors are looking to increase their Read More >

On 16 December 2020 the following joint statement was issued by the FBI, the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence: “Over the course of the past several days, the FBI, CISA, Read More >

Exponentiality not linearity is the way forward for proptech. This is our second article on how the power of data will change the real estate investment landscape. In the first article we explained how ownership data can connect finance and Read More >

… and why ownership capital structures matter Much is written about data in today’s world. Those that have it, and more importantly those that control it, are seen as the new masters of the universe. Some people say it is overcooked, but Read More >

Following a look at historical proptech impacts and then the current innovation and productivity challenges faced by the wider real estate industry, this final piece in our three-part mini-series will conclude by mapping the current proptech Read More >

Continuing our three-part series on proptech, a look at the innovation gap in real estate. Following our walk down proptech’s memory lane last week, today we will look at the real estate industry’s innovation gap. This in turn will set Read More >

Near-zero yields are making it difficult for pensions and endowments to hit the targets they need to meet their future obligations. It’s pushing disciples of the classic investing strategy of 60% stocks/40% bonds to get more creative. As an Read More >

This article was originally published in September 2018. The market players are different and the transactions are significantly more complex than 30 years ago Perhaps the long hot summer in continental Europe is not the most prudent time Read More >

The need for remote working and task automation to cut infection risk is boosting adoption, but proptech shouldn’t just be about damage limitation. According to MetaProp’s recent survey, 89% of proptech investors believe that the current Read More >

The ‘next normal’ – the same as the last normal but has just arrived more quickly than expected. Like so many events, it’s a case of expediting existing trends not starting new ones. Retailers that have been living off low interest rate Read More >

ARTICLE ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED JANUARY 15TH 2018 I spent Christmas in Northern California this year and met up with friends whilst in San Francisco. Given that I was in the world’s tech hub, it didn’t take long for the conversation to turn to Read More >

A few weeks ago, plans for a third runway at Heathrow Airport hit the skids when the Court of Appeal ruled the Government’s decision-making process unlawful. For the moment at least, with ministers preoccupied by both Brexit and the small Read More >

Among the maelstrom of election news stories that broke yesterday was one that will be music to the ears of many free-marketeers. Responding to a question from a member of the public, Boris Johnson said that the BBC licence fee should be Read More >

Nato’s birthday celebrations were marred by a row between two of the guests, Presidents Macron and Trump, over both the health of the military alliance and France’s decision to hit US firms with a new digital tax. This row has at least drawn Read More >

It’s a dark day for Londoners. Uber – the ride-hailing app which launched in the city in 2012 and has since revolutionised transport across the world’s major cities – has been handed an effective ban from operating in the capital by Read More >

The rural economy has extraordinary potential.  Food production will always be the backbone of any farm, but landowners are now increasingly likely to be building affordable homes, renting holiday cottages, running renewable energy Read More >

Alex Green responds to John O'Connell's HS2 article. Dear Read More >

It seems that barely a week goes by without some scare story being published in the press about how AI and automation are going to lead to mass unemployment and a world without work. The Technology Trap by Carl Benedikt Frey is a refreshing Read More >

So now we know for sure. Thanks to Grant Shapps, Westminster’s biggest open secret is finally out there. HS2 is actually going to cost considerably more than we were told four years ago. For us at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, this is a Read More >

The hidden benefits of Britain’s new railway are vast. The only problem is they’re hidden In recent months there has been no shortage of ill-thought through articles in the British press urging the cancellation of High Speed 2, a Read More >

The internet has opened a huge window onto the range of products and services available to consumers, and revolutionised the way we purchase them.  In the UK alone, E-commerce sales have rocketed up fifty-six per cent from £375.1 billion Read More >

It is commonplace to say that the pace of technological change is speeding up. From Twitter to online shopping our everyday lives are, apparently, being transformed. One of the central puzzles of modern economics is that this change is not Read More >

When France built its high-speed rail network, it revolutionised the way we looked at train travel. What takes 4-5 hours by long-distance bus from Brussels to Paris can now be completed in just over an hour with a Thalys train. Dumping slow Read More >

Data is all the buzz around real estate, but how do we categorise it, what data do we need, what are the concerns and why should I care about the content of the local water supply before I consider whether to purchase a real estate Read More >

The kings of Siam used to gift a white elephant to courtiers to whom they took a dislike. The elephants would be incredibly costly to maintain as they required special food and housing and it was illegal for the owner to sell them or to put them Read More >

We’re getting closer to understanding one of the big puzzles of our time – the world is in the middle of a technological revolution, but it is difficult to spot in the economic data. As Robert Solow has pointed out, computers and internet Read More >

It is possible to wonder a little about those who rule us. Occasionally they come up with ideas that leave more than a hint of a suspicion that they don’t have much of a clue. The latest example comes from the All Party Parliamentary Group Read More >

Sensors, data and automation will increasingly define construction projects – as well as cityscapes There are more than 1,000 ongoing smart city projects around the world right now. Sensors, data and automation will increasingly define Read More >

Wednesday’s Spring Statement was always likely to be a sideshow compared to the Autumn Budget, even if Brexit hadn’t taken centre stage. But the Chancellor still managed to say a few interesting things, including on “tech and the Read More >

Amazon’s Echo speaker and similar smart speakers have recently been added to the basket of goods the Office for National Statistics uses to calculate inflation. It’s another useful reminder of how we tend to overstate inflation and thus Read More >

The combination of mobile phone technology and the internet has had a transformative effect on many parts of Africa. By leapfrogging the landline stage of telephone development, a host of services, particularly banking, have brought Read More >

1. It’s time to take responsbility Unease about big tech’s impact on society is driving a movement towards responsibility. Fifty-one per cent of Americans think that major technology companies should be regulated more than they currently Read More >

Last night’s eagerly awaited speech by the Chairman of the Government’s much hyped rail review, former British Airways CEO, Keith Williams, raised real concern amongst those of us holding out for real structural change on the railways. In Read More >

“If someone was ready to fork over $1 million to you to stop using the Internet – forever – would you do it?” Economics professor W. Michael Cox, who asked that question of his students, received an unambiguous reply. “You couldn’t Read More >

The UK and Australia may soon press ahead with world-first digital taxes on the appropriation of user data for advertising and other services by tech giants such as Google and social media platforms like Facebook. These moves come as France’s Read More >

There is a new instalment in the poorly acted farce that is HS2. Today it has been revealed that HS2 may be forced to cut the number of trains it runs each hour in a vain attempt to curtail the project’s ever-increasing costs. The move Read More >

Recently, I asked for the public’s thoughts on the sharing economy. I also met SharingEconomyUK, an industry body representing companies such as Uber, Airbnb, Zipcar, TaskRabbit, Liftshare, Deliveroo, Gumtree and many more. What I heard Read More >

There was a horrible inevitability about the recent announcement of a gene-edited baby: that it would happen at some point, that it would be in China, that it would be announced on YouTube by the rogue researcher, He Jiankui of the Southern Read More >

We’ve all heard that the CEO also needs to be the CTO – it’s a truth that we can’t ignore. Technology in business as in our lives is no longer something ‘separate’, it’s a part of it. We don’t see our smartphones as a Read More >

The internet was supposed to fragment audiences and make media monopolies impossible. Instead, behemoths like Google and Facebook now dominate the time we spend online — and grab all the profits from the attention economy. A timely new book Read More >

The number of criminal cyberattacks keep rising and we are still fairly in the dark when it comes to how best to tackle them. AI is often seen as the holy grail that will save us from hackers and ransomware. But will it actually be able to Read More >

Back in May, apparently in an effort to look like ‘real people’ on social media, Conservative MPs received some much-needed, if slightly elementary, top tips to up their game on Instagram. But while some have way to go in keeping up with the Read More >

We gluttonous Westerners are being told to dramatically cut our meat consumption to reduce our carbon footprint, but it could well be that a pioneering new technology removes the need for any enforced vegetarianism. If we can resist the Read More >

Some people are dumping their smartphones and returning to old-fashioned hand-held devices. Eddie Redmayne did so in 2016, stating, “It was a reaction against being glued permanently to my iPhone during waking hours. The deluge of emails was Read More >

Surveying is not an industry generally renowned for perching on the cutting edge of technology. You would be hard pressed to find many established businesses in this sphere at the forefront of the digital revolution, although the principle of Read More >

Back in May, apparently in an effort to look like ‘real people’ on social media, Conservative MPs received some much-needed, if slightly elementary, top tips to up their game on Instagram. But while some have way to go in keeping up with the Read More >

Exxon Valdez, Gerald Ratner, Deepwater Horizon - all names that have become metonyms for corporate crisis. More recently, organisations such as PepsiCo and Microsoft, as well as large charities, have experienced crises of their own, through Read More >

Politicians love to talk up technological advances. Those of a certain age will recall Harold Wilson famously talking about the “white heat” of the technological revolution demanding economic and social changes “which permeate our whole Read More >

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of interconnected devices or systems, which communicate and share data with other smart devices. The IoT is all around us—and it’s connecting our phones, computers, cars, and homes. It allows us to Read More >

What is it about the European Union and bad tech laws with boring names? Brussels managed to transform four harmless letters into a byword for irritating compliance-induced spam and pop ups as well as a consolidation of power for the Read More >

Technology isn’t just about your home or office, it’s also about the environment that surrounds us all. And it’s happening now. Urbanites are the driving force of economies, innovation and lifestyle. By 2045, the world's urban Read More >

The government announced a “sector deal” for the artificial intelligence industry today, which it says is worth £1 billion. About a third of that comes in the form of public funding and a third from new private sector investment, Read More >

Having recently hosted an event at MIPIM 2018 on the topic I can confidently say the Internet of Things (IoT) is here to stay and is set to make big differences in the way we live, work and shop. You can look at stats such as there being a Read More >

Technological progress has frequently resulted in changes in the nature of work, sometimes affecting skilled workers more and sometimes affecting unskilled workers more. But whichever categories of worker were affected, such changes have almost Read More >

Rob Bould past chairman of the Investment Property Forum and NED of Coyote Group gives his perspective the tech revolution in the property industry and looks at the practical applications of these new technologies. Few people can define ‘Big Read More >

With the annual Consumer and Electronics Show (CES) having recently taken place in Las Vegas, now is a good time to assess which technology is set to make an impact in the property world this year and beyond. Voice activation truly arrived at Read More >

Automation, customisation and big data are some of the trends expected to change the retail industry and the way consumers shop in the future. Recently CBRE, the world’s leading real estate services firm and a Partner of The Property Chronicle, Read More >

Kok Keong Tan is the co-founder of FundPlaces, an alternative investment platform for real estate. I embarked on a different type of real estate journey three years ago, setting out to change how people invest in real estate. My team and I Read More >

Elon Musk, perhaps the world’s best-known serial tech entrepreneur, has spent the last 15 years creating an empire that has vertically integrated the sustainable energy and transport market and now he is on the verge of bringing it to the Read More >

Featuring

Investor's Notebook

Smart people from around the world share their thoughts

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The Macro View

Recent financial news and how it connects across all asset classes

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Technology

Fintech, proptech and what it all means

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Uncorked

A sideways look at the world of wine

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The Architect

Some of the profession's best minds

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Residential Investor

Making money from residential property investment

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The Professor

Analysis and opinion from the academic sphere

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Face to Face

In-depth interviews with leading figures in the real estate/investment world.

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The Headhunter

Recruitment and career moves

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The Analyst

Investment themes and trends

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The Historian

A look back at previous cycles, events, characters

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The Economist

Money, rates and prices

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Political Insider

The inside scoop on Washington, Westminster and Whitehall

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The Agent

Reflections on estate agency, today and in past times

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Alternative assets

Investing in tangible assets

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