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Since the 1980s, the Dallas suburb of Plano has attracted some of the country’s biggest corporate headquarters and established itself as a hub for major employers. But how did Plano revamp to meet the goals of a changing economy and a changing community? The city made a pivot that has been echoed in growing cities around the country: a major shift toward investing in parks and activating green space.

“It really is about addressing community through the equity and justice lens, and the inclusion lens, to positively impact communities that have been historically disinvested in and undervalued,” said Gabrielle Bullock, principal and chief diversity officer at Perkins&Will L.A. Studio. She made the remarks at the ULI Spring Meeting in Denver during the panel, “Transformative Urban Corridors: Equitable Revitalization of Communities in Three Cities.”

Even as national policy support becomes less predictable, many states and localities are hard at work developing pragmatic, scalable housing solutions.

In April, the Urban Land Institute welcomed Vincent Ilustre as the new president of the ULI Foundation, appointing him to lead philanthropic initiatives and strengthen donor engagement. Ilustre was drawn to the role by the strong connection members have with ULI. “There’s a genuine passion for this organization,” he said. “Members don’t just join ULI—they invest in it because it’s helped shape their professional journeys.”

In a landmark moment for California housing policy, Governor Gavin Newsom signed two transformative bills into law in June 2025—AB 130 and SB 131. They fundamentally reshape how the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) applies to infill housing. Enacted as part of the state’s broader budget package, these reforms remove major procedural barriers for urban multifamily projects and signal a new direction in the state’s effort to address housing affordability through increased supply.

ULI is proud to announce partnerships with seven public agencies in California and Nevada that are working to advance resilience in urban planning and real estate development in their communities. The organizations are partnering with their local ULI District Councils as part of a larger effort aimed at connecting public sector leaders to ULI’s technical assistance, networks, and other resources and helping cities prepare for the impacts of climate change and other environmental vulnerabilities.

Franz Colloredo-Mansfeld, chairman and CEO of Cabot Properties, was elected as the new global chair of ULI for a two-year term that began July 1.

In the heart of the Texas Triangle, an ambitious new vision is taking shape: Sandow Lakes, a 33,000-acre (13,355 ha) master-planned community in Milam County. The project’s first phase, known as The Switch, is already underway. Spanning 3,300 acres (1,335 ha), The Switch is an advanced manufacturing and logistics campus under development by Xebec. This supersite is poised to play a vital role in strengthening domestic supply chains by supporting the reshoring of critical manufacturing operations.

As sage smoke wafted up, the knowledge holder gently waved an eagle feather from side to side, enveloping the booklet. And with that, the ground-breaking Guide to Truth and Reconciliation in Land Development was cleansed, blessed, and released to the world.

Six months after urban wildfires devastated neighborhoods in Los Angeles, signs of rebuilding are evident. Although the landscape still resembles a charred war zone, many residential lots have been cleared with assistance from FEMA. In Altadena and Pacific Palisades—the communities that, together, lost more than 16,000 structures—some homeowners are overcoming huge hurdles, such as permitting and steep construction costs, and are expected to begin rebuilding this year. And builders are banding together in a new Builders Alliance to share resources and incrementally ease the massive housing shortage that plagued the city even before the fires.

ULI San Francisco and the Civic Joy Fund have announced the winners of the Market Street Reimagined competition. This international competition of ideas, which attracted 173 submissions from nine countries, challenged entrants to create a new vision for the city’s main thoroughfare that would draw more visitors and businesses to the area. A distinguished jury, hosted by San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie, divided the $100,000 prize among the winning teams and designated eight additional entries as honorable mentions.

A team of ULI experts visited Fort Worth in September 2024 to develop anti-displacement strategies for the city’s historic, majority Hispanic Northside neighborhood, which faces mounting pressure from two nearby megadevelopments, as well as broader metropolitan growth trends that drove up the area’s property values 60 percent from 2016 to 2021.

Extreme weather events such as droughts and floods significantly impact vulnerable communities across the country—especially in places where the population continues to grow, creating even more tension between real estate demand and the risk of catastrophic flooding or drought. The good news is that shaping real estate projects around water-wise and flood-resilient measures can greatly mitigate water-related risks—and greatly enhance asset value at the same time.

In 2015, Austin, Texas’ mayor at the time, Steve Adler, brought together business leaders, real estate professionals, and housing experts to take on the crisis in affordable rental housing and the risks it posed to the city’s workforce stability and economic sustainability. With insights and research from a ULI Technical Advisory Panel and ULI’s Terwilliger Center for Housing, the Austin Housing Conservancy fund was born, offering a revolutionary approach to preserving workforce housing. Now known as the Texas Housing Conservancy, the fund became the nation’s first to combine a nonprofit investment manager, Affordable Central Texas, with an open-end private equity fund.

A seminar organized by the ULI Singapore NEXT Committee presented attendees with the little-known concept of real estate “tokenization,” or fractional investing/trading, as a potential bridge between private investors and direct ownership. Although not new, tokenization in real estate is a niche market, particularly in Asia Pacific, with Singapore hosting a small number of the specialized digital platforms.

U.S. President Donald J. Trump signed the nearly 900-page One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law on July 4. The budget reconciliation legislation extends numerous provisions included in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that directly affect commercial real estate, including reinstatement of bonus depreciation and extension of the Qualified Opportunity Zone Program. It also incorporates provisions aimed at incentivizing affordable housing, including a significant expansion of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program. At the same time, the new law makes major cuts to wind and solar incentives.

In Midtown Atlanta, the Georgia Institute of Technology Foundation is turning the 100-year-old former Biltmore hotel into a mecca for incubating technology startup ventures.

The ULI Terwilliger Center for Housing has announced two finalists for this year’s Jack Kemp Excellence in Affordable and Workforce Housing Award and eight finalists for the Terwilliger Center Award for Innovation in Attainable Housing.

During his keynote speech at the 2025 ULI Europe Conference in London on June 18, Daniel Lacalle. chief economist of Spanish private bank Tressis, told real estate business leaders they should be allocating more investment dollars to hard assets such as real estate. “Hold hard assets like there is no tomorrow,” he said. “Hold onto hard assets as much as you can.”

ULI Asia Pacific has released its 2025 Asia Pacific Home Attainability Index, revealing persistent challenges to affordable or accessible housing across the region. The fourth edition of the report assesses 51 market segments across 41 major cities.

The closing panel at the 2025 ULI Asia Pacific Summit brought together real estate players from a wide range of geographies and capital markets roles. Audience polling at the start of the discussion revealed that Summit attendees believe the world will become more multipolar after a generation of American exceptionalism, with some audience members feeling that the U.S. will fall behind Asia or Europe.

Joseph C. Canizaro, a past chair and trustee of ULI, passed away at age 88 on June 20, 2025. A member of ULI for more than 50 years, Canizaro built one of New Orleans’ most influential real estate development companies, Columbus Properties, which helped shape the city’s skyline.

Setting the tone for this year’s ULI Asia Pacific Summit, moderator Lola Woetzel, senior partner emerita at McKinsey & Company, presented a panel of industry leaders with the perennial question: “How does it feel to live here?” The discussion brought into sharp focus the complex realities shaping housing across the region.

Once the site of an abandoned quarry, Singapore’s Rifle Range Nature Park now serves as a buffer zone protecting one of the island nation’s last primary rainforests, Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, from encroaching development and human activity. Located to the reserve’s south, Rifle Range is Singapore’s first net-positive energy nature park, harvesting more energy than its annual operational requirements.

At the 2025 ULI Asia Pacific Summit, a distinguished panel of industry leaders convened to dissect what the rise of artificial intelligence means for the sector and how organizations can harness its potential. Their debate spanned the frenetic growth of data centers, the journey of AI adoption, and seismic shifts afoot for the built environment and the workforce.

Without climate adaptation, large corporations could face $1.2 trillion in annual losses by 2050, according to Lindsay Brugger, vice president of the Urban Resilience program at ULI’s Randall Lewis Center for Sustainability in Real Estate. Brugger delivered opening remarks at ULI’s sixth annual Resilience Summit on May 15 in Denver where more than 300 attendees gathered at the Hyatt to explore resilience and recovery locally and elsewhere.

The ULI Randall Lewis Center for Sustainability in Real Estate and the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS) brought together executives in the commercial real estate and property insurance industry on May 13, 2025, in conjunction with the ULI Spring Meeting and Resilience Summit in Denver, Colorado, to discuss strategies for operating in this environment of growing risk. As Mary Ludgin, event facilitator and senior advisor at Heitman, noted, “Increased conversation between property owners and insurers is a crucial step in managing risk and controlling costs in a tumultuous time of heightened physical risk.”

The ULI Net Zero Imperative (NZI) is ULI’s multiyear initiative to accelerate decarbonization in the built environment and advance the organization’s net zero mission priority. Implemented by the ULI Lewis Center for Sustainability in Real Estate, key programs include Technical Assistance Panels (TAPs), which are intense three-day engagements during which a panel of ULI member experts and partners help clients or sponsors, often local governments, think through strategies for advancing their net zero goals.

We hope everyone is looking forward to warm-weather activities as summer has begun at ULI HQ in Washington, D.C. In case you missed it, we wanted to share the articles that resonated with the most readers in the first half of 2025.

Deep discounts, favorable financing, and long-term benefits are turning users into owners.