Asia Where It's At

Earlier this month, real estate technology/automation conference Realcomm brought its message of intelligent buildings to high-tech San Francisco.

While the intelligent building phenomenon is seeing progress in this city and neighboring Silicon Valley, it's generally "somewhere between myth and reality" here in the United States, according to the show's co-founder and Producer Jim Young, the Jamesan Group, San Diego. Asia, on the other hand, is where to look for innovations in next-generation commercial real estate, he said.

"Make a reservation, take a week of your time, go to Asia and see an industrial revolution four times the size of what your grandparents experienced," Young urged the audience at a Realcomm seminar, "Intelligent Cities—Asia Now Raising the Bar!"

Geoffrey Kasselman, SIOR, Op2mize, Inc., one of the seminar's speakers, was equally impressed with his travels in Asia, especially South Korea, where he noted that Internet access is "free and everywhere."

Kasselman also listed reasons why Asia is more receptive to the idea of intelligent buildings, including more partnerships between the public and private sectors, more direct government involvement, a different decision-making process and a culture where innovation is commonplace and normal.

Susan Golding, of the Golding Group, Inc. and a former mayor of San Diego, added that besides an emphasis on innovation, wireless technology is also the norm in Asia. A key driver to this, she said, is that unlike the U.S., a strong cable infrastructure simply wasn't installed in Asia. As such, when wireless technology came along, Asia was able to simply skip the cable stage. She did add that while she hopes to see a growth in wireless technology use in the U.S., the importance of a physical infrastructure should not be discounted.