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Downtown Urban Regeneration_Jonny Friedman_City Opportunity Fund_South Africa
86 Plays4 years ago
Welcome to episode 47 of the Green & Healthy Places podcast in which we discuss the themes of sustainability, wellbeing and community in real estate today.
I’m your host, Matt Morley, Founder of Biofilico Healthy Buildings, and today I’m in Durban, South Africa talking to Jonny Friedman, Executive Chairman of the newly launched City Opportunity Fund.
In the 1980s and 90s Jonny invested in over 100 buildings in the Brighton area in the UK and another 20 buildings in Hoxton and Shoreditch in London, playing an instrumental role in the urban regeneration of both places.
Today he leads a team of over 120 people under the Urban Lime developments name focused primarily on Cape Town and Durban in South Africa. He has over R2 billion invested in real estate in Cape Town and Durban so far.
We discuss topics such as activations in the public realm, tactical urbanism, apartheid’s influence on urban geography in downtown areas in South Africa, what he calls ‘catalytic developments’ and the incremental gains from creating momentum in placemaking strategies, public-private partnerships in changing the identity of entire urban districts, as well as ESG and sustainability in the South African context.
Jonny was one of the very first people I ever worked for back in the early 2000s, I’ve followed his rise with keen interest over the past two decades and the City Opportunity Fund looks set to make a massive impact on the lives of those impacted by social and affordable housing in Cape Town and Durban, so, here he is, Mr Jonny Friedman.
GUEST / JONNY FRIEDMAN
HOST / MATT MORLEY
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode 47
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome to episode 47 of the Green and Healthy Places podcast, in which we discuss the themes of sustainability, wellbeing and community in real estate today. I'm your host, Matt Morley, founder of Biophilico Healthy Buildings, and today I'm in Durban, South Africa, talking to Jonny Friedman, the Executive Chairman of the newly launched City Opportunity Fund.
Jonny Friedman's Role in Urban Regeneration
00:00:35
Speaker
In the 1980s and 90s, Johnny invested in over 100 buildings in the Brighton area around the UK and another 20 buildings in Hoxton and Shortage in London, playing an instrumental role in the urban regeneration of both places. Today, he leads a team of over 120 people under the Urban Lion Development's name, focused primarily on Cape Town and Durban in South Africa.
00:00:57
Speaker
He has over 2 billion rand invested in real estate so far.
Urban Development Strategies in South Africa
00:01:02
Speaker
We discuss topics such as activation in the public realm, tactical urbanism, apartheid's influence on urban geography in downtown areas around South Africa, what he calls catalytic developments and the incremental gains from creating momentum in placemaking strategies.
00:01:19
Speaker
public-private partnerships in changing the identity of entire urban districts as well as ESG, that's Environmental, Social and Governance and Sustainability in the South African context. Johnny was one of the very first people I ever worked for back in the early 2000s in London as I was starting out. He gave me an early break. I followed his rise with keen interest over the past two decades and the City Opportunity Fund looks set to make a massive impact on the lives of those
00:01:45
Speaker
in the social and affordable housing space in Cape Town and Durban. So with great pleasure, here he is, Mr. Johnny Friedman. Johnny, one of the concepts that really leaps out from the work you've done in the past has been around this idea of creating democratic spaces that have been re-energized and given new relevance within a city context.
Bottom-Up Urban Planning: A Discussion
00:02:08
Speaker
How do you see the key drivers of success for you in terms of democratizing spaces within a city today?
00:02:17
Speaker
Hi, Matt. Look, I think the first thing to, and a very important part of this, is thinking deeply and widely about who's already there, what's exactly there already in terms of community, in terms of neighborhood, in terms of the various parties that are there in terms of who's living there, who's working there, who the idea is.
00:02:46
Speaker
and also what the history is, what the culture is and how to really take what is there and build upon that, how to make that relevant and better and repurposed in such a way that works for the people that are there ready and works for the communities that they're ready and in fact makes it so good for them that it starts to develop
00:03:12
Speaker
a interest and a perspective and an excitement for others to come and join it. So it creates a sort of momentum around itself.
00:03:22
Speaker
But it's not a sense of gentrification or total change where you bring in and you sort of from top down impose change upon a particular area or district or city. It's really about working with what's unique and special about that already. What has it, how has it historically evolved? Who's there? Who are the shareholders and the stakeholders in that space?
00:03:48
Speaker
how to work with that as your starting point and I think in a way that's a sort of bottom-up approach as opposed to a top-down approach and where I've seen successful urban regeneration projects work and where areas which have become irrelevant or under purpose or underutilized or out of fashion where I've seen it work extremely well is where you take
00:04:12
Speaker
where you get a proper deep understanding of that original space and the people within it. And that is your starting point. And from there you build. And that's completely unique in every single situation. There's not two separate buildings or areas or districts or neighborhoods that are the same.
00:04:31
Speaker
there's not a cut and paste approach that works, what you do in one city won't work in another city, what you do in one area won't work in another area.
Challenges of Scaling Urban Projects
00:04:40
Speaker
You have to sort of understand the uniqueness of it in every sense, culturally, historically and get underneath it and when one's able to do that then an organic
00:04:59
Speaker
interesting developed type of result starts emerging and it is organic. It's not something again which is imposed. I'm not really into master planning in the sense of really planning out every single building, every single aspect of a particular area. What I like to do is sort of set frameworks and kind of have a direction of travel that allow it to happen organically and when I've seen the best results it's when it's happened in that way.
00:05:27
Speaker
So in the past you've done both buying up smaller units, for example, at the top end of Bree Street in Cape Town, but you've also done far larger buildings. In terms of how what you've just described relates to piecing individual elements together versus going in with one large building that can almost be an individual catalyst. How do you see the opportunities and challenges there in terms of scale? How does that connect with that concept of democratizing spaces within the city?
00:05:59
Speaker
Scale is important but it's not the only thing that counts. Where it gets very exciting is when you can work at scale, when you can see whole areas and you're buying lots of buildings and you're looking very carefully at the relationship between the buildings, the private space and the public space and you start integrating the
00:06:22
Speaker
and I think the democratization that you're talking about in terms of what I mean by what I think you mean by that is the opening up of the space so that it's usable and available and doesn't have barriers to entry, in fact it's the opposite, it's a space with
00:06:40
Speaker
available to all and people can appreciate and use it at different levels and I think the best spaces are like that where they can be appreciated in multiple different ways and barriers to entry are cut down and there's an opening up process between the private and the public so I think it's that space where scale important
00:07:04
Speaker
I think where you're using individual buildings as a catalyst for change for whole areas, I think that can happen. And we've had successful examples of that happening. But I think it needs to be in the context of thinking about spaces more generally and how the public spaces again interact with that building. And again, making it appropriate
00:07:27
Speaker
and bringing it and doing it in the right way so you can be a catalyst to change by making small changes and you know tactical urbanism is a lot about that type of strategy where you go in and you make minor changes here and there and in fact they can add up to a lot more than some of their parts and make spaces and environments and districts quite exciting.
00:07:53
Speaker
by adding in little elements here and there, which don't necessarily need to be large ones. In fact, I think a lot of mistakes in the town planning space are made by the idea that activations and development needs to be very substantial to make change. And in fact, I think a lot of substantial and meaningful changes can be made in small ways, clever ways, ways that don't involve huge budgets.
Comparing UK and South African Urban Development
00:08:22
Speaker
So I think individual buildings as long as again there is a sense of where the area is, where it's come from, who's there, who are the stakeholders and it's done in an appropriate way. I think it can make a big impact with like you're really sort of like putting a huge
00:08:44
Speaker
dollar of confidence into an area. You're putting something that really sparks up an area and can become a catalyst to attract other and different interesting things.
00:08:57
Speaker
I think perhaps the term that we've been skirting around is activation of the public realm, isn't it? Democratizing spaces, creating valuable, useful, accessible public realm spaces that everyone can use. Are there differences? You have obviously started in the UK and then at some point you really doubled down on developing in South Africa, particularly in Cape Town and Durban. So you have that two perspectives in a way, the UK and later in your career where they say in terms of
00:09:25
Speaker
public realm and also more generally in terms of where the priorities lie. What are the particularities of SA when you're looking at urban regeneration projects? Are there particular elements that are very unique to SA that one needs to consider there that perhaps for someone listening in another country or back in Europe might not be immediately obvious? Well, I think they are of course because the histories of the two countries are so
00:09:55
Speaker
so very different and the architecture and the geographical layout of South Africa has been so influenced by its unique history going back a couple of hundred years but you know in particular of course the history around apartheid and separation of
00:10:18
Speaker
areas by identifying regions and the geographical implications of apartheid were huge. And of course, also the fear that was surrounding apartheid both during it and after it. And the way in which that influenced architecture and town planning and urban design was massive. And it was all about
00:10:46
Speaker
creating safe spaces by massive walls, dividing up areas physically in terms of distance, but also in terms of the way in which they were built, creating office parks, which you had massive security around, and residential gated communities in suburban areas, again, where
00:11:11
Speaker
issue where big walls were the key issues. So it was a tremendous amount about keeping people out and not using public spaces. So a lot about what we've done at Urban Line and our philosophy is about breaking those walls down, about opening up private spaces with public spaces, about inviting people in and creating spaces which are saved by the fact they're used, that they're vibrant, they're exciting and
00:11:39
Speaker
and breaking down those perceptions around security, around cities being a fearful space where the street is a fearful space and breaking those types of perceptions down and opening up the city as an exciting, vibrant,
00:11:56
Speaker
And as you said, democratic space.
Transforming South African Urban Spaces
00:12:02
Speaker
So huge differences between the two. Where of course you're living in London, growing up in London and walking in the streets and being part of that city and the excitement of being able to enjoy public spaces.
00:12:17
Speaker
To an extent in South Africa it's very much you know you get in your car you go from you know point A to point B you know exactly where you're heading and you park your car at point B, you do whatever you're doing at point B and then you go back to back in your car and back to point A and very often that those points are a home and shopping centre or home and office and it's very much you know going into underground parking there's no real interaction with the city
00:12:43
Speaker
And where we found, you know, where we can really make a huge difference in this country is about turning that around and turning areas into destinations in themselves. So we're not just going to this restaurant or this office and parking and doing. We're actually saying we're going to this area and we're going to walk. I mean, these things are obviously for Londoners.
00:13:05
Speaker
You know, that's it's almost obvious. But here in South Africa, where there are so few high streets, where there are so few public urban spaces to enjoy and walk and see and be, you know, and have the surprise of what's around the corner and have multiple things to to look at and interact with and do all in sort of one area, something which has not really happened outside of very controlled areas like shopping center environments. So that's where we try to make a difference and try to introduce
00:13:34
Speaker
South Africans, so the excitement about what urban centers can feel like, what the street feels like, how to sit in the coffee shop and enjoy the hustle bustle of city life, which has been so missing, both during the apartheid era and post it.
00:13:53
Speaker
around the particular history of South Africa. So I think there's a lot of opportunity here, just kind of letting people experience what we're so used to in Europe.
00:14:04
Speaker
We take it so granted that you can walk around the city and enjoy the streets and enjoy street life and be constantly surprised by what might be available, what little new shops opened up, what coffee shops available, what all of those types of things which we sort of take almost for granted is not available here or is only just becoming available in multiple different ways or
00:14:26
Speaker
So even where they've done good sort of urban regeneration projects, what South African developers have usually done is they've created sort of like a little oasis and they put a wall around it again. And that's what they've called sort of urban regeneration, because the mindset and the mentality is all about safety, security, and keeping restricting people coming into spaces. In fact, the opposite of what we're talking about in terms of democratization of spaces.
00:14:55
Speaker
It's almost, even though they're urban regeneration ideas and spaces, they don't quite get this concept of opening them up and making them exciting and spaces in their own right where people can move freely between public and private spaces and between different private spaces.
Collaboration in Urban Development Projects
00:15:14
Speaker
So it's actually very exciting developing here because A, you can do it at scale, and scale is important as previously discussed, but I think B,
00:15:23
Speaker
It's almost like introducing a new way of living and excitement around what the city equals and what it can be. And that's what I found very, very fulfilling. And when people find it, they love it. And in fact, particularly, you know, young people.
00:15:40
Speaker
I think you know creating great urban democratized type of spaces is extremely, it's something that young people almost kind of need to have and if you don't provide it within the city they'll go elsewhere and they'll go to cities which do provide it. So it's been very exciting working here because we've been able to do it at scale and we've also been able to sort of bring a different mindset to it and started to introduce
00:16:06
Speaker
people to what in Europe we sort of take almost for granted but what has been very much prohibited here either you know actually or in terms of perception being people who perceive these spaces as too dangerous somehow and I feel like over the last 20 years that we've been working here we've moved the mindset on that in a lot of areas. You mentioned a few that we've worked in probably 25 different areas across the country
00:16:32
Speaker
And all of the areas, one of the things that they have in common is that they're about opening up, they're about connecting public and private spaces, they're about giving a feeling of being able to be in a space and be able to engage with the excitement of what city life, what city life at its best can be.
00:16:54
Speaker
And to achieve that, are you finding, if we consider say a district level or a cluster based strategy where in a sense you start to spread out and create, as you mentioned, sort of a street level neighborhood that's really something quite innovative for SA but perhaps something we might take almost for granted in Europe, does that require
00:17:14
Speaker
greater public-private collaboration or is it something that a private developer such as Urban Lime can pretty much roll out themselves? How much partnership is involved in that with the city planning? The more partnership there is the better. Where the schemes work best is where the public and private work hand-in-hand together.
00:17:36
Speaker
And almost by their nature, they have to have a good symbiotic relationship with the cities and with the owners of the public spaces. But what can also happen is that as a private developer, you can sort of be the catalyst for that as well. So even if you haven't got a willing partner to start with,
00:17:59
Speaker
you can start showing them how the public and private realm can start interact. And what's interesting is that we've had such positive engagements where when the cities and when neighborhoods and when the stakeholders start to see change, we found that they've got more and more engaged and that it goes beyond talk and actually into reality.
00:18:24
Speaker
and when they start to see it there's a momentum that builds and in fact momentum in what we do is extremely important getting things done and doing stuff we were talking earlier about small interventions small interventions are hugely important because they develop confidence they develop confidence and then people see starting to see change and starting to feel change
00:18:45
Speaker
So actually just making smaller small interventions where people are starting to experience the sort of things that we were talking about earlier, the excitement of city life, the interaction with other people, the best of what cities and districts and neighborhoods can
City Opportunity Fund: Goals and Strategies
00:19:00
Speaker
be.
00:19:00
Speaker
Once they start to feel that, then it starts to grow momentum itself. And then, of course, others start coming in as well. We never look to be the only private. In fact, if we're the only people developing privately, we've kind of not hit. We've missed the target in a way. What we want to be is a catalyst for change. And once people start seeing it happening, it gets to a sort of a tipping point.
00:19:25
Speaker
where you know we could actually do nothing more and you come back in five years time and the area would be very substantially better than it is now because it's come to a sort of a tipping point where all the owners of the buildings start seeing potential they want to spend money on maintenance they want to think about the right tenant instead of just you know any tenant and it becomes a positive becomes a positive kind of political spiral and
00:19:54
Speaker
very much the municipalities and the local councils and other stakeholders. Get on board that enthusiasm if you create it. I see one of our roles is as kind of momentum builders. So yes, you can do catalytic developments, but also you can do a lot of small interventions here and there. And out of that comes a momentum and it starts developing a light for itself.
00:20:22
Speaker
and then all the stakeholders, very much obviously key stakeholders of the municipalities but other stakeholders as well, get involved and projects take on a life of their own.
00:20:35
Speaker
Fascinating and in a way that leads into then where you look to be changing gear in a sense with the launch of the City Opportunity Fund upcoming in June of this year. Clearly different scale but still in a way tapping into that same level of detailed insight and the knowledge that you have of particularly
00:20:55
Speaker
in a city Cape Town and Durban. So what's the aim there? What's the big goal with that new fund that looks to be, in a sense, taking urban regeneration to another level in SA, right? The City Opportunity Fund is actually taking the skill sets and our experience that we've developed in the three cities that we've worked in on two continents.
00:21:25
Speaker
having really distilling that and I would say if one does still that one comes down to the real skills that we have is how do we take.
00:21:35
Speaker
areas or buildings that have become inappropriate in terms of use, have gone out of fashion, that no longer have relevance in some way. And we've adapted them in an organic way, which doesn't feel like it's a top-down approach, which is a bottom-up approach, which we talked about, which is organic, which is incremental, but at the same time radically transforms areas and buildings. And at the moment,
00:22:05
Speaker
That skill set couldn't be more relevant because in the post-COVID environment, through the changes in technology, which have now been enhanced heavily by the experience we've all been through over the last couple of years, it's left a huge amount of real estate, not only in the city centers, but throughout the whole of South Africa and in fact globally. It's left a huge amount of commercial real estate.
00:22:28
Speaker
in some ways irrelevant, under-purposed or needs to be repurposed, reinvented, retort through for this post-COVID modern world. People essentially are not working from offices in the way that they used to and people are essentially not buying from shops in the way that they used to.
00:22:50
Speaker
Whilst this trend has been in place for quite a while in terms of flexible working and in terms of online retail, these are trends which are already well established before Covid. They've been hugely accelerated by Covid and the way in which we work and the way in which we shop and the way in which we live and the way in which we socialise and the way in which we think about our homes and the way we think of ourselves and each other has radically transformed.
00:23:16
Speaker
And what it's done is it's had a tremendous impact on the way in which we use buildings, the way we think about buildings, how we're going to be using buildings going forward. There's a massive shift which needs to be taken into account because there's a huge blend now between the virtual world and the real world. And how does one integrate the virtual experience with the bricks and mortar experience?
00:23:42
Speaker
So it's in that slot, in the slot of how does one repurpose, rethink, reinvent real estate, given these massive social technology, massive changes that have been happening and are happening and are accelerating at a tremendous pace and how it's impacting really every aspect of our lives. And where does real estate fit into that? And what is
00:24:10
Speaker
And how does one adapt these types of buildings, headquarters office buildings, for instance, shopping centers, high streets.
00:24:20
Speaker
Business travel has totally changed. Almost every aspect of the commercial real estate and leisure businesses have changed very fundamentally. And it's the reinvention and the rethinking of how does one adapt those to buildings which are relevant. And that's what the City Opportunity Fund has at the very heart of it.
00:24:45
Speaker
and the proposition is that we come up with a set of sort of broad solutions in multiple different categories as to how we can in general terms deal with some of these fundamental issues that have changed and a lot of real estate will never be the same again because things have fundamentally changed. So the City Opportunity Fund is a fund where we're injecting
00:25:14
Speaker
close to two billion rounds of our own assets into the fund.
Adapting Real Estate Post-COVID
00:25:20
Speaker
But we're also working with major partners who are going to be injecting real estate, which fits into that category, which are buildings, or groups of buildings, which need rethinking, repurposing, reinventing, which are no longer relevant, they currently are. And of course, the solutions to that problem of how does one deal with real estate in the post COVID environment,
00:25:44
Speaker
It's not cookie cutter. There's not a cut and paste solution to it. And again, the solutions will have to be crafted on a bespoke basis. And that is where our sweet spot is. And that is what the City Opportunity Fund is about. It comes out of a team that's got 30 years experience.
00:26:03
Speaker
in looking at areas that have gone out of fashion, that buildings which no longer are fit for purpose, and being able to adapt them and change them and get underneath the issue, finding the most relevant, the most appropriate solution for a particular area, building, district or city. And it's that which will be encapsulated within the city opportunity fund.
00:26:31
Speaker
In that context, then, the student housing and affordable housing sector. So what is the opportunity there? So if you've got a 1960s building that's really sort of past its sell by date, but yet has potential, how can a student housing concept or how would you adapt a student housing concept to fit into that space? Because there's surely opportunities there in that sector, right?
00:26:55
Speaker
Well there are a lot of buildings that fit into that category in the inner city. Some of them are more appropriate for retrofitting to student socializing and others and of course it depends upon exactly where the demand is but in both sectors that you that you brought up there they, they are
00:27:12
Speaker
now they're one of the solutions in effect or student housing and social housing are two of the solutions that we are looking very carefully at in terms of a much wider issue. But they certainly in South Africa are areas where there's a large amount of demand, there's government backing for it,
00:27:35
Speaker
And there's a real opportunity in retrofitting old office buildings, certain old office buildings, into spaces of that nature. And again, we would look at a project like that, like we look at any, and we think, well, what is the very best, the very, very best in asset class here? How can we do this in the very best way?
00:27:58
Speaker
and we would work off a wish list and look and think well what is it what does the ultimate student housing look like and we would literally run through and think about that and the same with social housing and create best in
00:28:13
Speaker
best in class types of buildings and areas. Again I like in that space linking buildings, I like thinking about the public spaces, I like thinking about how it feels to be not only in public space but how it feels to be within the building. I think a lot of the issues around the way in which buildings are used, healthy spaces, creating green spaces, spaces which are
00:28:41
Speaker
which feel good to be in. We almost everything we do, we look at, we take a sort of a living room approach. How does it feel to be in the space? We think about, you know, if we're actually in that space, how does it feel to be in there? Does it feel like a vibrant, healthy, democratic space, something that's inviting? We would look at student housing exactly that way as in any other class. So best in class is critical.
00:29:07
Speaker
How does it feel? How do the buildings interact? How does the public space work? What we don't like is huge concourses, huge concrete concourses which are kind of almost made for architects rather than for people. They kind of make the building look good and make the building look grand or whatever. What we're interested in is how does it feel? How does it feel to be in the space? How do we get a best-in-class feeling?
00:29:36
Speaker
what's most appropriate, what's there, how do we think about modern technology and how do we integrate that, how do we use the changes in the way in which we're living so radically and how do we integrate those into these buildings to make them not only relevant now but also relevant in 10 years time. So we're thinking very hard about that, the interaction between technology and real estate, the interaction between the virtual world and the real world
00:30:03
Speaker
And I'm going back to basic principles. How does it feel? How does it feel to be in the space? What do you need?
ESG in South African Real Estate
00:30:10
Speaker
So what are the needs of the people who inhabit those spaces? It's this type of thinking that I think sort of sets us apart and within the City Opportunity Fund. We're going to be having those types of conversations and that type of thinking going through everything we do. So whether it's a high street or whether it's a social housing project or whether it's a student city we're looking at,
00:30:32
Speaker
or whether we're looking at a neighbourhood scheme or whether we're looking at how does one reinvent the office space, the modern world, what's required now.
00:30:41
Speaker
The thinking starts there. Who's there to start with? How do we build on that? What's the most efficient, most exciting way to use the building? How does it feel to be in it? How do we interact with the technologies that are available? How do we blend the experience between the virtual and the real? This is the approach we're taking. It's not a traditional development. I think throughout the chat we've had, we've not actually used the word developer.
00:31:07
Speaker
We don't really consider ourselves developers. More around placemaking, more around reinvention, almost inventors or reinventors of space, not developers of space. So it's a different approach. It's a different way of thinking. It's very people-centered. You used the word democratization. It's very people-centered. How does it feel?
00:31:31
Speaker
very critical. How does it feel? What's the use? How does it interact with everything else we do? How does it fit in?
00:31:40
Speaker
You touched on a couple of things there, the idea of there being a component of health and wellbeing, and also to some extent, considering green themes and sustainability. We've spoken a lot about the social side, so the big hot topic at the moment clearly is ESG real estate, so environmental, social and governance within the sort of the macro perspective that you have from your position today. Do you see SA as being perhaps ahead or behind in any of those three? Is ESG real estate having
00:32:10
Speaker
the kind of impact on the real estate development market in SA that it is having in the US and in Europe or do you think there's a little lag between the two in that sense and therefore perhaps an opportunity for the fund to do something different? Definitely an opportunity.
00:32:28
Speaker
Look, in an environment where there's a tremendous amount of poverty in South Africa, there's a huge unemployment rate, especially in youth unemployment rate as it's epidemic proportions.
00:32:42
Speaker
There's so in that environment, in that context, yes, various different areas that you're talking about has been somewhat left behind and and it mustn't be. And where we look at buildings, we would take the best the best in class. We would be looking at following best standards and looking at the way they're doing it abroad and trying wherever possible to emulate it.
00:33:11
Speaker
and integrating wellness and healthy building type strategies both in terms of the internal inside the buildings but also externally and how to bring the two together sit right up at our you know high up on our list of priorities and I think wellness generally
00:33:33
Speaker
is a key growth area. Wellness in terms of the way in which we use buildings. Wellness as a sort of general concept is integrated into almost all of our projects in one form or another, but obviously it's come out of Covid. Covid has given us all a
00:33:49
Speaker
time of reflection around these issues, what's important to us. Well, honestly, in the more general form has been right up there with the conversation over the last couple of years. How and the importance of taking care of oneself, living in health environments and so on and so forth is critical for South Africa as it is for all other countries.
00:34:14
Speaker
where it's not left behind is obviously around in terms of poverty and social needs, which are at a different level to many first world countries. It's an incredibly valuable insight that you share with us today. Thank you for your time. I really appreciate it. If people want to learn more about Urban Lime and about the new fund that you're launching this summer, how can they connect and follow along?
00:34:41
Speaker
Well, they can go onto our website, theurbanlime.co.za or onto the City Opportunity Fund website, which is also up. So contact us or get in touch in any way. It's been a pleasure to talk to you about.