My first Publication Arup_BuildingDesign2020_v2 | Page 40

Leading research organisations project
significant changes in the location and
constitution of world markets over the
next decade, with an array of smaller,
technologically-advanced developing nations
joining the traditionally largest emerging
markets as important opportunity spaces for
client development.
Case Study: Urban-Think Tank
In 2010, the CEO of HSBC articulated
a vision of a future no longer exclusively
dominated by BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia,
India, and China), but heavily influenced as
well by CIVETS nations (Colombia, Indonesia,
Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey, and South Africa). The
McKinsey Global Institute predicts that the
percentage of Fortune Global 500 companies
located in emerging markets will increase
from 17% in 2010 to 46% in 2025. This shifting
market balance towards emerging economies
opens the opportunity for new processes and
designs that maximise efficiency and
minimise cost.
Location / Business: New York, NY.
McKinsey Global Institute for commercial use.
Emerging Economies
The Sustainable Living Urban Model (SLUM)
Lab is a design and research project
combining traditional architectural and design
education with sociology, economics and
natural science, with the aim of producing
politically engaged architects skilled
navigating the complex sociological, political
and health demands of urban development.
Columbia University and Urban-Think
Tank’s SLUM lab turns urban planning on
its head, injecting considerations of poverty
alleviation, sustainability and political action
into the earliest phases of high-density
development. As an increasingly greater
share of potential client work involves
densely urbanised contexts in emerging
economies, cultivating building designers
with a deep understanding of the social and
political ramifications of formal and informal
built environments will be a key competitive
differentiator.
Location / Business: Caracas, Venezuela.
Urban-Think Tank for Columbia University
Urbanisation and district-level development will
represent a larger proportion of building projects in emerging
economies in the coming decades. Countries such as China
are already pioneering the production of urban masterplans,
and critical lessons are being learned regarding the best
practices of designing whole cities. Although substantial
benefits of sustainability
and economy can be realised at the
masterplan scale, such projects must consider the intangible,
social elements of city design.
The developing world presents an enormous opportunity
to both surpass the conventional paradigms of building
design and urban planning and realise enormous social and
climatological benefits from holistic planning on a grand
scale.
Urbanisation, population growth, and rising middle classes
in emerging economies will each play a role in a substantial
growth in the proportion of building and infrastructure
projects taking place in the developing world. The UK
government forecasts that the population of Africa is likely to
double in the next 40 years, and that the population in India
is anticipated surpass that of any other country, with over 1.5
billion residents.
The population of urban dwellers in Sub-Saharan Africa,
for example, is expected to grow by 70% by 2025. Meeting
the needs of residents for housing, workplaces, schools,
healthcare, transit, retail, and access to basic amenities

will require a large quantity of new build projects in a
comparatively compressed timeframe. Urban development
projects in emerging economies require significantly different
design decisions than those in more developed regions,
and may present the opportunity to leapfrog over existing
infrastructure and design paradigms.
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Case Study: Top Six Emerging Economies in 2013
Building Design 2020
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