When I interviewed Michael Cooper, founder of Dream, back in 2016, one of the things he said to me was that real estate development is one of the most creative things you can do. What did he mean by that?
As a developer, you have to problem-solve within extreme constraints. There are zoning regulations, building codes, investor interests, neighbourhood associations, market conditions, and many other sometimes-competing demands at play.
The job of the developer is to navigate through this maze, rely on the expertise of others, and come up with the best possible solution. That requires creativity, and it’s what Cooper was getting at.
The process is also self-reinforcing: constraints are good for creativity. As filmmaker and actor Orson Welles once said, “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” In architecture school, we used to always say that the hardest thing is a blank canvas, because design is about solving problems. Constraints present problems.
Of course, developers can’t solve these problems on their own. They rely on talented multidisciplinary teams and the advice they provide. But it’s important to keep in mind specific professionals tend to view problems through the lens of their discipline.
A lawyer might feel strongly about a particular legal clause, or a structural engineer might view a particular design as optimal, but ultimately the developer is going to have to take these recommendations and evaluate them against the entire list of constraints they are facing. It becomes a creative trade-off.
The developer has to have the largest field of view. Seeing the whole board is how you make it out of the maze.