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To date, however, the industry has yet todevelop standards to evaluate ESG datathat compare to its traditional evaluation o portolio perormance.

  5 Responsible Property Investment [RPI] is anemerging investment strategy and disciplineconcerned with integrating environmental,social, and governance [ESG] data intoinvestment decision-making

Real estate investment plays a undamentalrole in determining how society usesresources, how the built environmentshapes social lie, how economic activitycan be sustainable over time. As an assetclass, real estate oers especially tangibledemonstrations o the importance o ESGanalysis in creating value or investors andsociety alike. We believe that a robustmetrics system can help shape the marketto better create sustainable outcomes or allstakeholders

I realized the Internet does a great job at connecting us with our friends and family, but a terrible job at introducing us to new people and getting us offline.

It’s incredibly difficult and frustrating trying to find like-minded people nearby.

When you look at what people are searching for, they’re searching for people close by who share their interests.

“’Placemaking’ is both an overarching idea and a hands-on tool for improving a neighborhood, city or region. It has the potential to be one of the most transformative ideas of this century.”

Placemaking is both a process and a philosophy

his process is essential–even sacred–to people who truly care about the places in their lives.

FTSE Group, NAREIT, and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) recently announced a jointly developed green property index for both institutional and retail investors. This first of a kind index was a collaborative effort bringing together global market leaders in US real estate indexing, REIT market expertise, and environmental building standards.

The indexes, currently in the final stages of implementation, will give investors a structured and disciplined way to measure and model the risk and reward profile of green property, using the first codified, transparent definition of listed green property. In addition, the indexes will also provide investors with new ways to incorporate principles of sustainability into their property selections and portfolios, and access this investment theme through index-linked financial products

owners include many of the largest green portfolios, measured as the estimated share of total portfolio value that has either LEED or EnergyStar certification. Just a few of the representative green indexed REITs include Douglas Emmett (DEI), Government Properties Income Trust (GOV), Piedmont Office Realty Trust (PDM), Boston Properties (BXP), Franklin Street Properties (FSP), Brandywine Realty Trust (BDN), Vornado Realty Trust (VNO), SL Green Realty (SLG), Ashford Hospitality Trust (AHT), Kilroy Realty (KRC), Washington REIT (WRE), and Cousins Properties (CUZ).

evolve into best practices and common leadership – this will accelerate the crowdfunding phenomena towards the $1 trillion market we predict it to be by 2020.  The investor democratization and customer communication involvement crowdfunding allows will trigger widespread corporate implementation by Q4, 2013.

mainly angels at this point – are in for the long haul

and not necessarily for a return on capital.

Public Access Requirements In all districts, residential, commercial and community facility developments on waterfront zoning lots (except for residential uses in low-density residence districts, heavy commercial and industrial uses in Use Groups 16, 17 and 18, and certain city infrastructure facilities, such as airports) are required to provide and maintain public open space at the water’s edge with pedestrian links to upland communities. Public access is also mandated on piers, platforms and floating structures. Water-dependent uses, such as docks for ferries and marinas, are also required to provide waterfront public access areas but are subject to a more flexible standard.

Threadless also carries over important functionality from its core website, allowing users to vote for t-shirt designs and enter design contests. Threadless does a great job of creating a fantastic user experience that doesn't require the user to leave Facebook

The company also shares a ton of great images on its wall that generate a huge amount of engagement.

Zappos has an amazing like gate that sits next to a featured photo submitted by one of its fans. Users can also easily join the company's VIP program from the page.

Today our largest marketplaces are for website templates as well as Adobe After Effects templates. When you go to the movies and see cool trailers, you are probably watching something that was made in Adobe After Effects. We also have background music marketplaces which is often used in advertising. The marketplaces are very much an exchange. We branched out from Flash into several design marketplaces.

chicken-and-egg

Our approach was to do a grassroots marketing campaign. We started with content we created ourselves, and we commissioned a little bit of content ourselves. Based on that content, we went over to other sites and started chatting with people to get them to check us out.

Retail and services: At least 50% of a building’s frontage on a public plaza must be occupied by retail or service establishments allowed under the applicable underlying zoning district. These uses may include neighborhood retail uses such as restaurants, supermarkets and clothing stores. Certain uses that are incompatible with the goal of providing active, enlivening establishments adjacent to the public plaza are prohibited, including offices, wholesale establishments, automobile servicing and showrooms, public parking garages and lots, certain manufacturing establishments, banks, and plumbing, heating, and ventilating equipment showrooms. To ensure that valuable retail spaces are provided, each such establishment is required to be at least 15 feet in depth.

Just like in corporations, setting goals and having a vision proves to be an essential start for cities that want to engage business.

Matthew Lynch, the project lead, said one of the main success factors is the opportunity for direct and open dialogue. “

“Crowdsourcing is the process by which the power of the many can be leveraged to accomplish feats that were once the province of a specialized few.” And a lot more will change, very quickly.

In Europe, equity-based crowdfunding allows people buy an ownership stake in your business. That practice is illegal in the U.S., but will likely gain steam in a global marketplace where individuals can use platforms like Symbid to help propel an interesting new business into the marketplace. Social lending sites like LendingClub or Prosper permit you to legally crowdfund your for-profit startup in the U.S., but you’ll have to start paying it back immediately, and you could be left liable for the loan if the business fails.

Crowdsourcing will only grow, and it’s up to you to weigh the risks and benefits of using it to extend your enterprise. It may serve a single, specific purpose, or support a key component of your operating blueprint across your organization, or it may not be the right choice--at least not yet.

The rapid growth of SRI in recent years is the best evidence that sustainable and responsible investing yields competitive returns.

Over the past 20 years, the total dollars invested in SRI has grown exponentially, as has the number of institutional, professional, and individual investors involved in the field.

The bottom line is that more and more investors adopt and use SRI strategies not only because such investments allow a focus beyond the bottom line, but also because returns are comparable to those of more conventional investments.

“We cannot apply the same approach for both.”

As UTC’s Sisson put it, “When we see cities stepping up and making policies and strategies in support of energy efficiency, that is a clear signal to us.” He also pointed out that city visions can vary dramatically, so it’s important to understand their objectives.

Invest as little as $25, or as much as you want, in clean-energy projects. Earn a princely 6.38 percent interest annually for the next five years. Make the world a better place.

Mosaic, based in Oakland, Calif., has figured out how to crowdsource solar projects in a way that seems to be a win-win for everyone. For each project, it seeks investors — smaller fries, like you and me — to fund a given project, promising a respectable rate of return. As loans get repaid, investors can roll the proceeds back into new projects, or take the money and run. Think of it as Kickstarter for clean energy.

He dropped out of Yale in 2002 to help build a youth movement for climate solutions.

There’s a new era of social networking that’s taking shape around charitable giving. Younger people are rapidly adopting these new tools, and learning to use them in more and more substantive ways, to go beyond mere socializing and make these tools extremely productive. We’re seeing the sphere of social networking mature in a way that’s very exciting. People who continue to dismiss these social platforms as "a waste of time" or "just social chatter" are missing the boat. This is how people interact with each other and get things done. They share their personal and professional lives online. It should be no different when it comes to their philanthropic lives. More and more, we’re seeing the Crowdrise community share their charitable efforts with their social networks, both as a way to highlight their own commitment to a cause and as a very efficient way to turn their friends and family into new supporters.

They say “time is money,” but time is also an irreplaceable and personal connection to a cause.

For me the biggest challenge is that you are just getting your first visitors. I would go out and comment on other blogs and comment in forums to try and get people to visit my blog. When it came time to launch a new blog, we would harness traffic from the first blog to promote the second.

Digg during its second week of existence. That was a potent source of traffic back in the day. We have concentrated a lot of social media ever since. To do well in social media you have to build up a genuine profile. You have to get on sites and interact on sites as a real contributing user. You need to establish a network and feed in content. We did a lot of that.

We joined Twitter fairly early on. We built up profiles for the company as well as ourselves. I tried to think of Twitter using a 90/10 rule, meaning 10% might be something involving Envato and 90% of the time I wanted to be engaging followers with engaging content based on the topic itself.

It includes the standard socio-economic and demographic factors – age, occupation, education, income – but importantly, in addition to behavioral factors, uses values and attitudes.[1]

New Economic Order: This group comprises about 24 percent of the adult population of developed economies. There are 59 million NEOs in the US, 6 million in Canada, 12 million in the UK and 4 million in Australia. NEOs exhibit progressive social values, have high social intelligence and are motivated by authenticity, design, quality, experience, provenance and the path less travelled. Almost all (93%) of NEOs are in the top third of discretionary spenders.[4]

Evolving Economic Order