Spatial governance: The metalanguage of spatiotemporal information and its infrastructure

‘Spatial governance’ involves a large number of situations where knowledge of place and time is important in achieving acceptable organisational outcomes. This paper argues that spatial governance calls for information-intensive activity in three main areas. The first establishes ‘authority’ in a legal entity to decide issues regarding resources within a territorial jurisdiction. The second involves planning the future use of resources. It engages a language of design, purpose, modeling, visualization, expectations and risk. The third involves monitoring of outcomes to see if expectations are met; and whether changes to authority and planning regimes need to be made in the light of experience. This engages a language of observing, recording, accounting, auditing, statistical indicators and accountability. ‘Authority’, ‘planning’ and ‘monitoring’ regimes can be constructed using a relatively small number of elements, in much the same way that a large number of words with recognisable meanings can be created using a relatively few standardised letters of the alphabet. Words can combine in a similar process of combinatorial explosion to create any message that can be imagined. Similarly, combining authority, planning and monitoring regimes can create a metalanguage of ‘spatial governance’ to give purpose, meaning and value to any spatiotemporal information system that can be imagined, described, interpreted and understood.

Findings from the 2015 Institutional Real Estate Capital Allocations Monitor

Since 2013, the Baker Program in Real Estate and Hodes Weill & Associates have co-sponsored the Institutional Real Estate Capital Allocations Monitor (the “Allocations Monitor”). The Allocations Monitor was created to conduct a comprehensive annual assessment of institutional allocations to real estate investments through analyzing trends and collecting survey responses of institutional portfolios and allocations by region, type, and size of institution. The Allocations Monitor reports on the role of real estate investments in institutional portfolios, and the impact of institutional allocation trends on the investment management industry.