The real estate sector plays a significant role in driving, but also addressing, the climate emergency and other critical sustainability issues like resource scarcity and social inequality. At the same time, the sector depends on natural resources, a stable climate, and a thriving society, and must therefore consider key sustainability issues for its own survival. The sector therefore needs to be reimagined to support a sustainable future for all.

On the Sustainable Real Estate: Creating a Better Built Environment online short course, you’ll learn how to mitigate risks and find opportunities associated with sustainability challenges in the built environment. Designed by expert faculty from the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), the course explores how sustainability intersects with various aspects of the real estate sector, such as design, technology, policy, and finance. With an overview of industry trends and emerging risks, you’ll examine how sustainable real estate can contribute to a more resilient and inclusive society, and positively impact communities and the natural environment. Toward the end of this eight-week course, you’ll develop a personal action plan to deliver a sustainable outcome in your own context. This strategy will help you realize the role you and your organization can play in improving the sustainability of the built environment around you, your supply chains and the broader real estate network.

This course is for professionals who want to understand the sustainability challenges facing the real estate sector, and seek the knowledge to address those challenges. By taking this course, you’ll prioritize sustainability goals and gain insights relevant to both public and private sectors. Real estate developers, entrepreneurs, city planners, architects, engineers and other built environment professionals will learn some of the latest planning, design and technology considerations, uncovering both risks as well as opportunities in sustainable development. Public sector professionals will have the opportunity to study the impact of a sustainable real estate sector on social and environmental systems, and explore solutions to related built environment challenges. Investment professionals will realise the impact of climate change and social inequality on real estate investments, as well as the value in sustainable built assets and businesses.