Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Responsibility in Developing: Why More Need to Grasp It

Throughout these past few weeks I have been writing on various real estate issues. This week is going to be a little different. Drawing inspiration from a series of essays from the This I Believe project, this week I thought I would share with you, the reader, why I write about real estate and sustainable elements.

I believe that responsibility should be the main focus of real estate developers world wide. The real estate industry, up until recently, has been a very hot market, and to some extent will always be at least in California. Many people profit from investing in real estate and developing land. It is because of this ability to gain a profit that people sometimes forget what is really at stake, and that is depleting mother nature and mother Earth of precious natural resources; chiefly land. The Earth itself is one very large piece of real estate. The size of a family’s home, no matter how big, is still a very small decimal point of the Earth. It is when many millions and millions of families build homes and other buildings that we slowly consume the Earth’s remaining land. Land is not something that is as abundant as we would like it to be. Open areas of nature are dwindling by the minute. It is because of this that I believe developers need to come to a compromise with our Earth and give back a little bit for taking so much from her.

Throughout building my blog, I realized that I slowly became interested in not only real estate developments all over the country and the world, but that there are other ways in which we can build and develop land. When I think responsibility concerning building, I think of “sustainability” and “smart growth”, which are the only ways in which we can build and satisfy our needs for homes, office space, etc. while doing our best to minimize our impact on our surrounding natural environments. I must admit, when I first became interested in Real Estate it was simply because I thought it was a smart career move. I realized that so many people have made so much money doing it. I landed an internship and was wowed at how much money my bosses made and how seemingly easy it was to get into the industry. It was a period in time in which I was enrolled in Business school, which made me think of only one thing: profit. It was a selfish and self-motivated effort to get into the industry, but I am glad I found a way to look at my career in a more positive light. After changing majors to Planning and Development, I realized there was a more sensitive way to build which was not only profit oriented, but somewhat philanthropic in terms of giving back to the Earth. The need for homes and shelter will never fade as long as we humans are on this planet. Throughout history, civilizations’ housing was the best way to tell much about who those people were. Nothing else can tell more about a people and their culture than housing. Housing is the best form of outward expression. Solving Global Warming and alternatives to fuel is a very complicated issue, however I believe that I am capable of at least discovering ways in which we can make an office building somewhat self sufficient and not dependent upon the city’s power grid or sewer systems. Through rigorous cooperation with engineers as well as architects, I believe I can make buildings responsibly and in a way which can maximize our stay on this planet a little longer. I hope others will follow this same path of responsible building because I think with how much money is being made in the industry, it would show a lot of character to put some of that profit back into building something that is more environmentally conscious.

1 comment:

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