Many advances have been made in research in the field of sustainable building (Dridi, 2017) as well as in the field of sustainable mobility (Banister, 2008). There is a close link between real estate, considered as a generator of displacement, and sustainable mobility, a concept that aims to rethink travel, better plan and reduce its carbon footprint. In fact, it is because buildings are immobile that we have to be mobile. Thus, the question asked in this research is: what role for sustainable real estate in the co-construction of mobility?

On the environmental front, the real estate and transportation sectors are responsible for a significant contribution to GHG production and global warming. The last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report published in October 2018 shows that the Paris Agreements, aiming to limit global warming below 2°C to 2100, will not be achieved if we do not put more efforts. In fact, ""global underwriting under the influence of the NDCs, global warming is expected to surpass 1.5°C, even if they are supplemented with very challenging increases in scale and ambition of mitigation after 2030 (high confidence)."" (IPCC, 2018). Therefore, it is important to be reactive and act on topics with huge impacts on the global warming. Global warming is caused by greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions, one of the greatest threats to ecosystems (IPCC, 2018). According to the International Energy Agency, 15% of all of GHGs are produced by the road transport (IEA, 2016). If nothing is done to counter this trend, the situation will worsen knowing that the global population is expected to increase to 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100 (United Nation, 2017), with already 5 billion of urban population in 2030 (Seota, Güneralpa and Hutyrac, 2012). Therefore, it is important to rethink the way we move in order to reduce the need to travel (Banister, 2008).

The adoption of an ecosystem approach makes possible the identification of the existing links and interdependencies, between the actors involved in these two spheres of activity, and facilitates the global assessment of their environmental, social and economic impacts. As a result, the research project aims to take a step towards the adoption if this ecosystem-based approach by bringing together experts from both sectors to analyze their perception of the impacts generated by their projects on the other sector. Our basic premise is that a better understanding of the impacts of the projects implemented respectively by the actors in each of these two sectors can potentially provide avenues to better understand the interdependencies and interrelationships between real estate and mobility. Even better, it can contribute positively to sustainable development.

We conducted a first exploratory research to explore and measure the perception of real estate and mobility experts on the interdependence between sustainable real estate and mobility. In order to do that, we analysed the data collected during a workshop organised in 2018, conducted a survey and interviews.

• The workshop “Sustainable real estate and mobility” was conducted at the World Summit on Sustainable Mobility, Movin'On 2018, organized by Michelin in Montreal. The ""burning question"" of this workshop was “What role will real estate play in the co-construction of mobility?”
• We have collected and analysed the responses from a questionnaire distributed at the beginning of the workshop to 44 participants. This first material analyzed with SPSS, was aiming to determine the profile of the participants and their understanding of the mobility-real estate link. 
• In addition, we realized nine interviews conducted with experts. We also analyzed material used during the workshop (drawings and sticky notes), which was interpreted by the experts during interviews. These interviews have been coded and analyzed with NVivo software in order to understand the perception of the experts towards this link sustainable real estate and mobility.

Interviews revealed that participants perceived the interaction between sustainable real estate and mobility around concepts such as nature, mixed use, architecture, collaboration and transportation. 

Surveys show that respondents believe that real estate projects they know will transform the way we use buildings in a long-term horizon. With regard to mobility, respondents believe that the mobility projects they know will transform the way we move in a short term horizon. Already, we can see differences in the time horizon of the perception of the impacts produced by the projects carried out respectively in real estate and mobility. This difference raises the question whether the impacts of one on the other are well taken into consideration.

The main success factors for the integration of real estate and mobility according to the survey seems to come mainly from significant economic interest (39.5%), a strong and sustained social action (25.6%), a well-adjusted regulation (27.9%) and others (7%).

The results also reveal that respondents consider that the type of change required for successful real estate-mobility integration are organizational (33.8%) and behavioural (33.8%) with the same importance. The technological factor (22.1%) and others (10.4%) appears less important.

In conclusion, results from the interviews show that the perception of the real estate - mobility link in the living areas has to include nature in order to motivate the citizens to adopt active mobility. Results also indicates that buildings within neighborhoods should consider the integration of mixed use and complementary services to reduce the need to travel. 

This first research explored the perception of actors, involved in real estate or mobility projects, on the contribution of sustainable real estate in the deployment of new mobility. It opens research avenues for the development of indicators to measure the evolution of this perception. The results also reveal the interest of the subject and the need for additional subsequent research to analyze the evolution of the perception of these actors.