Embracing natural capital concepts can reduce construction costs, accelerate the planning approval process, ensure climate change adaptation and add to operational resilience.
The real estate sector requires large amounts of land for development and therefore has a high impact and dependency on natural capital. Embracing natural capital concepts can reduce construction costs by maximizing the multifunctional nature of existing natural capital in site design, accelerate the planning approval process by securing stakeholder approval and ensure that climate change adaptation is incorporated for operational resilience. This can also increase the end value by enhancing desirability of the development and through demonstrated brand value.
UK’s House of Commons desired to develop ‘eco towns’, where a new community is built to have zero carbon emissions. The first such town is North West Bicester, developed by A2Dominion on greenfield land near London. Arcadis designed the green and blue infrastructure, around which the masterplan was developed, to maximize natural capital benefits, reduce operational dependencies and deliver a net gain in biodiversity.
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