Neighbourhood - Building the Future of Urban Living

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

UK town centres are in crisis; there are around 50,000 fewer shops on our High Streets than 10 years ago due to a 20.1% decrease in visitor numbers (an average of 40 shops closing per town centre in England and Wales) (BBC,2020). These issues disproportionately affect poorer towns, with areas in the north-west (such as Blackpool) seeing closures at double the average rate (Guardian,2020). COVID-19 is expected to rapidly accelerate the closure of town centres, leading urban areas full of empty buildings and low footfall. Operators, agents, and landlords don't have the tools to service growing consumer needs for connected communities, with no vertically integrated solution with the necessary tools to connect and activate a network of spaces, people, and services.Neighbourhood are developing a novel, scalable AI solution for urban regeneration. The platform will offer a mobile first 'place-as-a-service' subscription, forming small neighbourhoods of locally-connected properties and on demand services. Tenants can search for properties, arrange viewings, take virtual tours, fill in forms, submit references and pay deposits via a mobile app., as well as communicate through community message boards, local events and classes (e.g. bring-and-shares, wellness classes, and community volunteering). Tenants will be rewarded for making environmental and socially impactful choices, such as low energy use, shopping at a local business, with a 'token' system to spend towards rent or other local services. Thanks to Neighbourhoods agile long term/short term lease backend algorithm, they make the most out of the real estate market demand maximising its yield per property. The platform developed in this project will drive community interaction and sustainable choices to address the growing challenges of urban loneliness and sustainable regeneration.This project will lead to development of a pre-commercial prototype of Neighbourhood's 'Neighbourhood Operating System': a vertically integrated platform to manage, market and activate space, communities, and commerce. This platform will be validated through a 3 month trial with a large mixed use landlord.