Thinking beyond the Product: A Conversation with Calvin Gladney

Calvin Gladney, CEO and President of Smart Growth America, kicked off this year’s ULI Philadelphia Annual Real Estate Forecast 2021 by challenging real estate development professionals to see themselves in a way that can promote equity during the keynote presentation titled “The Pandemic, Politica, and the Pro-Forma: Achieving Equitable Development in a Post-2020 World”. In discussing how to achieve equitable development in a post-2020 world, Gladney claimed that the past and present affect how the real estate development community will think about equitable development moving forward, suggesting three principles for how the audience can incorporate equity into their work.

Past

Gladney noted that we need to acknowledge history before addressing current challenges and opportunities, recognizing that the past has ramifications for 2020 and beyond. For instance, the maps that the Homeowners’ Loan Corporation used to redline urban communities mirror trends we see today, including increased surface temperatures and homicide rates in formerly redlined neighborhoods. These associations demonstrate how land use policy of the past affects outcomes today. Ultimately, past decisions made by federal, state, and local governments yielded racist outcomes, according to Gladney.

Present

Three current intersecting crises affect how the real estate development community will think about equitable development beyond 2020, according to Gladney. First, the COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented challenges. However, Gladney posed two questions to the audience to evaluate the pandemic’s effects on real estate development: are the trends that we are observing new, or are they an acceleration of existing trends and are these trends short-term phenomena, or will they continue after the pandemic is resolved? By answering these two questions, the real estate development community can better assess how the conditions that have resulted from the pandemic will influence equitable development in the future.

Second, the “racial reckoning” experienced in 2020 also will affect the future of equitable development, suggested Gladney. With a change in the national dialogue around systemic racism, Gladney told the audience that everything you as real estate professionals do can either promote equity or promote inequity, and it is incumbent upon everyone to adopt an anti-racist mindset. Finally, Gladney claimed that “paralyzed politics” will influence the future of equitable development. Whether it is the federal, state, or local government, Gladney acknowledged that the public sector affects the outcomes of both the pandemic and racial justice movement. He suggested that the action – or inaction – of governments will determine if 2020 will be a year for systemic change or just a year we remember as one in which we merely discussed how to overcome racial inequities in our work.

Future

So how does the real estate development community move forward with promoting equity? Gladney suggested three principles for the audience to consider. First, developments should match the challenges and opportunities of the neighborhoods in which they are located. He suggested that the audience should view themselves as community shareholders when entering a neighborhood, and each project should help address challenges the community is facing or capitalize on its assets. Additionally, Gladney called on the audience to march along with others. Those responsible for a development project must take the time to learn from the community about residents’ wants and needs. While Gladney recognized that this could slow the development process down, real estate developers must realize that their projects are located within a community context. To legitimize this step, Gladney also called for the audience to mean it. Developers must push through the issues and be sincere with their efforts to understand the communities in which they’re building. Ultimately, he claimed that the real estate development community must not just think about the product but also the process.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia or the Federal Reserve System.

See below for links to additional recaps from the Annual Real Estate Forecast 2021:

Contributed by Jimmy Gastner, community engagement associate with the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.