Infrastructure and Property Investment Gap

Challenge No. 1: Global infrastructure and property investment gap

The digital economy has changed the way we live and work. It makes us realize that there are many elements in the world's social infrastructure which are not working at all and that need to be invested in, be it through digitization, new community centers and spaces, public facilities and/or affordable housing.

The global infrastructure investment gap can be described as follows: $3.7 trillion need to be invested in economic infrastructure to keep pace with projected growth from now until 2035. The problem of affordable housing is widening the gaps in economic infrastructure. Due to given urban population growth, 106 million low-income urban households could be added by 2025. Providing enough housing and building it, would require costs of up to $16 trillion, that includes the cost of land and construction. Today's infrastructure is not sufficiently solvent or of high quality. Private capital can help solve this problem. If state and local funds were already scarce in many of these areas before the pandemic, the problem is much more acute now. State funds have been depleted by efforts to boost employment and the economy, so there are now even fewer funds available to provide vital and much-needed infrastructure.