The property development process: a Scottish case

An existing model of the commercial property development process was applied to a mixed use redevelopment site. The case studied was the redevelopment of 7.7 hectares of previously developed land in central Edinburgh containing nine listed buildings. 158,000 square metres of accommodation are planned, 65% of which will be residential and 25% offices. The site was first marketed in 2000, construction began in 2005 and approximately 40% of the project was completed by the spring of 2009. The single case study was investigated by inspection of documents and plans, site visits and semi-structured interviews with senior executives representing all the companies and organisations that were influential in decision making. It was found that the commercial model was able to represent the reality of the project environment reasonably well; however adjustments were required to cope with mixed-use redevelopment. The overall fate of the site was determined by the interplay of market forces and state policy, yet the detailed evolution of the project was dependent upon the organisations and individuals that became involved. Questions of design and the architect played an important role in decision making. ‘Place making’ was found to be fundamental in both planning and financial terms. It was confirmed that a genuine mixed-use environment that is well conceived and managed can be very attractive to the public, residents, businesses and investors. While some listed buildings were sacrificed, involving controversy and delay, conversions of others made a significant contribution both environmentally and financially. These results contribute to the literature of detailed property development cases while refining the model used

The Fine-Tuning Argument and the Requirement of Total Evidence

According to the Fine-Tuning Argument, the existence of life in our universe confirms the Multiverse Hypothesis. A standard objection to FTA is that it violates the Requirement of Total Evidence. I argue that RTE should be rejected in favor of the Predesignation Requirement, according to which, in assessing the outcome of a probabilistic process, we should only use evidence characterizable in a manner available before observing the outcome. This produces the right verdicts in some simple cases in which RTE leads us astray, and, when applied to FTA, it shows that our evidence does confirm HM

Virtual cities management and organisation

This paper presents a recent overview of the increasing use of Virtual Reality (VR) technologies for the simulation of urban environments. It builds on previous research conducted on the identification of three-dimensional (3D) city models and offers an analysis of the development, utilization and construction of VR city models. Issues pertaining to advantages, barriers and ownership are identified. The paper describes a case study of the development of a VR model for the city of Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK and outlines the role that academic institutions can play in both the creation and utilization of urban models. The study offers a new approach for the creation, management and update of urban models and reflects on issues which are emerging. Areas for future research are discussed

On the Hedging of Options On Exploding Exchange Rates

We study a novel pricing operator for complete, local martingale models. The new pricing operator guarantees put-call parity to hold for model prices and the value of a forward contract to match the buy-and-hold strategy, even if the underlying follows strict local martingale dynamics. More precisely, we discuss a change of num\'eraire (change of currency) technique when the underlying is only a local martingale modelling for example an exchange rate. The new pricing operator assigns prices to contingent claims according to the minimal cost for superreplication strategies that succeed with probability one for both currencies as num\'eraire. Within this context, we interpret the lack of the martingale property of an exchange-rate as a reflection of the possibility that the num\'eraire currency may devalue completely against the asset currency (hyperinflation).Comment: Major revision. Accepted by Finance and Stochastics. The original publication is available at http://link.springer.co

Pre-letting of office developments : a guide for occupiers

‘Pre-letting’ is an agreement between a potential tenant and a developer to lease a building whose construction has not yet started. Benefits typically flow to both parties from a pre-letting, however, opportunities to pre-let are limited by place, time, market forces and the negotiation strength of both parties. This research bulletin, which has been produced jointly with Northumbria University, involved interviewing 30 office occupiers and developers who have been involved in prelet agreements throughout the UK. It examines the pros and cons of taking a pre-let, the typical lease terms, and design issues. It also looks at where and when pre-lettings are most likely to occur