Hence, I think the first new maxim has to be optimum flexibility in the way that we plan and design our buildings and structures for the future in that very often what we plan today will only come into use in four to five years’ time. This not only applies to the internal spaces that we are creating but also to the buildings themselves.

I talk often of a “Lego” regime with buildings capable of being dismantled and reassembled in different forms as youngsters do with their wooden blocks. While this might seem somewhat futuristic, conceptually we need to be able to accommodate as much change as possible. This will in turn need major updates to our planning regulations and our building codes which at the moment are far too prescriptive to deliver this new approach.

Secondly, and this harks back to the need for flexibility, I think that we are moving on from the world of mixed use to that of general use in that the lines between established uses such as retail, office and residential, are being increasingly blurred.

Shared use and the phenomenon of shared living are relatively new and increasingly relevant factors which makes forward planning a difficult play. Hence the requirement not only for physical flexibility but also the adoption of a new mindset and regime by the traditional landlord who will find it more and more difficult to let space and charge rent in the same way as today.

In the spirit of sharing, an owner will have to adopt what will be akin to a partnership approach with those that occupy and share the space provided. Similarly, in the case of what was traditional retail and which is now driven by experience, the space provider and the experience provider will have to work in tandem with a common goal to respond to the changed and changing aspirations of those now expecting something very different.

Indeed, I think the whole landlord tenant relationship will be challenged going forward and we are going to be looking at a very different range of business models in the future.

This leads me to my third point and that is the reality that much of our existing building stock is, by future standards and requirements, redundant and not fit for purpose. Much of it was designed with only one use in mind and the potential for change and adaptability is limited. A sanguine thought for those who hold large portfolios of existing assets and perhaps there is scope for serious thought as to the division of value between land and buildings, particularly if the buildings are realistically examined against today’s new backcloth.

There is also the whole issue of resilience which to be fair is not just a single building challenge but also applies to districts and the built environment at large. In reality, how many of our existing buildings are capable of withstanding physical or operational damage caused by extreme climatic conditions and this applies at a community and city level as well.

On then to point four which is the way that we design and the way we build. Granted that enhancements such as building information modelling (BIM) have made a great difference but, apart from limited prefabrication efforts, we generally still build in a very traditional and inefficient manner and have done so for generations. The building industry will, I believe, be disrupted in a major way in the next few years with new materials and new techniques and move into assembly that rather construction mode.

Similarly, should we still be designing and building structures with a 50-year life or, back to my Lego world, should we be designing and constructing with redundancy in mind; so that sites can be quickly put to new uses and structures easily dismantled in response to changes in demand?

Finally, if I gaze even further into my crystal ball, I begin to wonder about the planning of new cities, and the repositioning of older ones but that is an article for another day.

Nicholas Brooke is chairman of Professional Property Services