Is beauty in the eye of the developer?

At EG’s latest Peter Wilson lecture last month, Dame Fiona Reynolds, former head of the National Trust, said: “Beauty can often be a means to deliver a better outcome, rather than a choice between no development and development. Beauty is not just aesthetics, it is a way of looking at the world. Understanding the qualitative bit as well as the quantitative bit really does matter.”

Many developers get it. But not all.

“Developers have got to realise that there is more to development than bricks and mortar,” says Capital & Centric’s John Moffat. “I don’t think it’s necessarily that you have to be philanthropic to take the view of development that good commercial sense and community social impact sit hand-in-hand. If we’re not delivering a positive social impact from what we’re doing, then even if it’s made a profit that’s still not a successful development. That is a step change in mindset that we need to see.”

Here, Moffat, alongside Rob Sadler, head of Savills’ Cambridge office and Ami Kotecha, co-founder of AREP and managing director of AmroLiving, discuss how the regional development market is slowly – but perhaps reluctantly – embracing the change.

EG editor-in-chief Damian Wild hosts.