117: What is the role of real estate in urban development? (guest: Lærke Hein - CEO of Tunnelfabrikken & NREP)

Welcome to the 117th episode of Urbcast, in which we will talk about: What is the role of real estate in urban development? 🧐 My guest today is Lærke Hein - CEO at TUNNELFABRIKKEN working with urban development at NREP - Scandinavian biggest real estate developer. Even though, Lærke calls herself an outsider in the real estate & urban development world, she co-founded (together with her brother - artist Jepphe Hein) Karriere - bar, restaurant featuring site-specific artworks by international artists. It opened in 2007 and was one of the first places in the Copenhagen famous meatpacking district. But today, we talk about developers and real estate perspective on and role in urban development of our cities. Why should we talk about it? I feel like we should talk about real estate contribution to urban development. What is its role in building our cities? Are developers only financially driven, wanting to maximize their investments’ return? Can they help us understand our cities better? Why is it worth listening to? Because Lærke shares her experience from working with urban development as a part of Scandinavian biggest real estate developer - NREP. She talks about developing massive public - private project like the transformation of the post-industrial Tunnelfabrikken in the North Harbor of Copenhagen. Some of the topics we touched upon: How to start working in real estate & urban development as an ‘outsider’? How does a developer approach urban development? Financial & business model behind developing an industrial building Tunnelfabrikken - how to bring new life into old industrial site? How to realize a project in a public-private partnership? Real estate - is it more than an asset class? Book recommendation: Normal People by Sally Rooney You get to know more about the guest: Lærke: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laerkehein/  NREP: https://nrep.com/ Tunnelfabrikken: https://nrep.com/project/the-tunnel-factory/ You can listen to the episode at: urbcast.pl/en You will find more useful links at: https://linktr.ee/urbcast Music: spear_oh