Urban Land Archives

The Mountain West stands in a pivotal moment. Rapid population increase, worsening drought cycles, and pressure on municipal resources are forcing communities to rethink how and where new growth should occur. Few regions face this tension more clearly than Utah’s Salt Lake Valley, where foothill development, limited water supplies, a shrinking Great Salt Lake, and outdated zoning models often collide. But what if development could work with the land instead of against it?

Australia’s population is projected to grow from 27 million to 31.3 million by 2035. At the same time, the number of Australians age 75 or older will surge from 2.1 million to 3.2 million, heightening demand for age-friendly and accessible homes and neighborhoods. The 2025 ULI Australia Conference was set against this demographic backdrop.

A recent project in Seattle—Africatown Plaza—demonstrates the alchemy of community collaboration and a development team’s commitment to creating a neighborhood that can thrive. Much can be learned from how the team prioritized people in the process to make a people-centered place.this process

Infrastructure Ontario’s Provincial Affordable Housing Lands Program aims to create a mix of market-rate housing and permanent, sustainable, affordable housing on surplus land in greater Toronto. For its first effort, the agency chose Dream Asset Management, Kilmer Group, and Tricon Residential to develop a mixed-use community with 2,500 apartments on a former brownfield industrial site.

FORUM, a life sciences building developed by Lendlease, is the first purpose-built life sciences building in Boston Landing, a mixed-use district in the city’s Allston-Brighton neighborhood. Targeting LEED Platinum, the recently opened building employs numerous strategies that enable companies to meet stringent regulatory requirements, reduce their carbon footprint, and achieve net zero operations.

In late 2025, the ULI Randall Lewis Center for Sustainability in Real Estate convened a series of roundtables with sustainability leaders to explore the industry’s perspective on top global priorities in 2026. Roundtables consisted of members of the ULI Americas Sustainable Development Council, the ULI Asia Pacific Net Zero Council, the ULI Europe Sustainability Council, and sustainability-oriented committees of District Councils from ULI San Francisco, ULI New York, ULI Los Angeles, ULI Singapore, and ULI Philadelphia.

The ULI Americas District Council Showcase of Excellence Awards celebrates achievement by District Councils as it relates to ULI’s mission and primary areas of focus, with particular attention given to programs that are both innovative in their format or approach to the subject matter and replicable at other District Councils. The ULI Americas region’s 58 District Councils submit the best of more than 2,000 programs held each year, with awards given, in each category, for District Councils with fewer than 600 members, and for District Councils with more than 600 members.

Steps from the Place de l’Europe in Paris, the French real estate company Covivio has recast a historic telephone exchange as its headquarters. Dubbed “L’Atelier,” the complex showcases the firm’s expertise, values, and culture; houses 250 Paris employees; and supports the company’s three business lines: office, hotel, and residential.

Jeff Speck and I first met in 2004. I had just been elected mayor of Oklahoma City, and I was invited to Charleston for an event hosted by the Mayors’ Institute on City Design. Jeff was one of the design professionals lending expertise to mayors facing complex planning issues.

Better Angels, a nonprofit tackling Los Angeles homelessness, is working to deliver dignified affordable housing in one third of the time and cost of conventional loans. Eviction-preventing microloans and tech tools empower outreach workers.

As 2025 draws to a close, the year’s most-read articles in Urban Land magazine reflect a pivotal moment in urban development. Themes reflected this year include resilience against climate-driven disasters, ambitious waterfront and downtown revitalizations, stabilizing construction economics, entertainment-anchored urban renewal, and innovative housing strategies. These stories also capture the industry’s focus on adaptive, inclusive, and forward-thinking land use.

When I took office as mayor of Oklahoma City in 2004, my goals were similar to any other mayor’s: to improve our economy, raise our national profile, and protect our citizens. We had an intersection with safety concerns, and our planning department was pushing the idea to me and the City Council to install a traffic circle. At the time, traffic circles were new to this generation of Oklahoma City drivers, but we soon found out that they were cost-effective and most certainly safer.

Since Microsoft established its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, in 1986, the company’s campus has grown from four buildings to more than 100. The East Campus Modernization Project is the latest addition: replacing several older structures with ones designed to meet the demands of the modern hybrid workplace—and embody the company’s commitment to both employee well-being and environmental stewardship.

Singapore real estate veterans at a Women’s Leadership Initiative (WLI) event last month suggested that finding your own voice, challenging yourself, and not over-planning can help women in the industry to progress in interesting and worthwhile careers.

Several architecture and infrastructure projects add up to a new public realm exalting the pedestrian experience

Three existing federal tax incentive programs that have been used frequently by developers received significant upgrades in this summer’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Low-income housing tax credits (LIHTCs) have long provided gap equity for affordable housing projects all over the country. New markets tax credits have been providing gap funding for a wide variety of economic development projects for more than 25 years. More recently, Opportunity Zones have steered investments in projects in low-income communities. The Big Beautiful Bill made improvements to each of these programs.

London is one of many cities rethinking its car-first orientation and embracing a more holistic vision of urban life rooted in social connection. Car-free and car-light streets are most successful when they function as social infrastructure that supports belonging, well-being, and public life. In other words, infrastructure matters, but intentional placemaking determines results.

Holiday travelers may notice that airport-connected hotels are incorporating more regional touches, from façade to dining. Here are five examples that offer the ultimate luxury, a short walk from guest room to terminal.

The National Retail Federation predicts a record-breaking 2025 holiday season, with U.S. sales for November and December projected to grow between 3.7 percent and 4.2 percent—pushing total holiday sales past $1 trillion for the first time. Yet there also are signs that consumers are nervous; that mood, plus accounting for inflation, could leave holiday spending relatively flat.

In October 2025, ULI convened the Water Wise Development Coalition to discuss the latest updates on water and land use policy and their implications for both the real estate industry and the country as a whole. The meeting brought together land use experts, real estate professionals, and public sector decision makers. Guest speakers included Kelly Connolly Kern, director of public affairs at the Alliance for Water Efficiency, and Lindsay Rogers, policy manager for municipal conservation at Western Resource Advocates.

The construction phase is where the vision of a future-proof parking facility truly takes shape, where theoretical plans transform into a tangible, tech-ready structure. This step isn’t merely about pouring concrete and raising steel; it’s a critical juncture for embedding the smart capabilities that will define the modern parking experience and ensure its long-term relevance in an evolving mobility landscape.

Within the next 50 years, Earth will become a planet of cities. From São Paulo to Shanghai, Lagos to Los Angeles, today’s cities are no longer just places where people live. They are the active ingredient shaping how humanity evolves, how we work, how we connect, and how long we may ultimately thrive as a species. Arguably, few organizations are better positioned to contend with the challenges of a fast-urbanizing world than ULI.

In 2025, the country’s industrial market is experiencing a rebalancing in the wake of surging demand and record new supply that marked the early pandemic years. New opportunities in fast-growing markets are emerging, and demand drivers are shifting. New space demand will grow the most, especially for small-bay industrial assets, according to a Q3 2025 report from the business advisory and accounting firm Plante Moran.

Data centers entail a massive carbon footprint, both physically and operationally, and have often been criticized for their significant energy consumption. The environmental consequences have become even more acute with the rise of AI, which requires enormous computing power and cooling. Cities, designers, and policymakers now face the urgent challenge of reimagining these resource-intensive facilities so that they can meet rising energy demands while mitigating climate pressures, ensuring these buildings enhance their immediate environments rather than compromise them. The Terra Ventures Data Center in San Jose, California, exemplifies this socially responsible approach. Expected to be completed in 2027, the new facility aims to showcase how careful planning can meet both global demand and local responsibility.

With society and the real estate industry significantly behind on achieving the targets set in the Paris Agreement, and worsening affordability in Europe’s housing, ULI Europe’s C Change for Housing program has launched a landmark interactive systems map and companion report to help the real estate industry identify, co-create, and scale the solutions needed to decarbonize existing and future affordable housing.

Last week, during ULI Washington’s Fourth Annual Future Forum, held at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C., a panel titled “Housing from All Angles” brought together three experts to examine the intersection of homelessness, development, and housing finance.

Once the heart of Kansas City’s Black commerce, arts and innovation, 18th & Vine gave rise to jazz legends like Charlie Parker and Count Basie, athletes like Jackie Robinson and Satchel Paige, and institutions including America’s Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. It was a district built from necessity, residents created their own economic and social ecosystem. Every storefront held rhythm and resilience.

ULI’s Homeless to Housed (H2H) initiative, launched after publication of the report Homeless to Housed: The ULI Perspective in 2022, highlights the numerous real estate-driven solutions that have been undertaken in recent years to tackle the problems of affordable housing and homelessness in cities across the country.

District Galleria, the name of a redevelopment plan in White Plains, New York—the county seat of Westchester—will demolish a four-and-a-half-decade-old enclosed mall and transform it into a community-oriented, mixed-use residential and retail space. The development team behind the multi-billion-dollar project is Pacific Retail Capital Partners (PRCP), which formed a joint venture with mall owner Aareal Bank, local developer Louis Cappelli of the Cappelli Organization, and New York’s SL Green Realty in 2022.

Canada’s real estate market remains deeply challenged: Although 2026 isn’t expected to deliver a rapid rebound, there is growing recognition that the next cycle will not mirror the last. Instead, the industry is entering a generational transition that demands new strategies, partners, and capital sources, as well as a fundamental modernization of how companies operate. A record-breaking crowd of more than 500 real estate leaders heard the “balanced but cautiously optimistic” 2026 outlook at the 21st Annual “ULI Toronto Trends in Real Estate” event at the Fairmont Royal York hotel.

Data center demand is exploding as AI and always‑on digital life fuel the sector, which is far outpacing the broader commercial real estate market. Yet a lack of power-adjacent land and increasingly complex approval processes are now slowing projects and threatening to put a ceiling on that growth.

Best practices for acquisition and redevelopment

Multifamily buildings occupy structures with storied pasts. The rise of remote work and the continued housing shortage have led to a surge in the number of apartments being carved out of former office space—70,700 in 2025 compared to 23,100 in 2022, according to RentCafe. Developers are increasingly turning to structures with former lives—as offices or industrial or commercial buildings—to create multifamily housing that gives residents dwelling spaces that feel rooted in place and connected to the broader narrative of their communities.

Four exemplary real estate projects were named the overall winners of the 2025 ULI Europe Awards for Excellence from this year’s ten finalists. The diverse winning projects include a social housing project in Milan situated on an abandoned office development site, a new secondary school in Brussels developed in a former brewery, a new flexible life sciences hub in Stockholm, and an acute healthcare facility in Birmingham, which is intended as a catalyst for community regeneration.

Molly Maybrun, chief development officer of local developer Fifth Space, and Wallace Whittier, senior real estate officer for University of California, San Francisco, spoke at the 2025 ULI Fall Meeting about their collaboration to build a new proton therapy cancer center at Fifth Space’s Dogpatch Power Station, a multiphase master-planned mixed-use development on the waterfront at the southern edge of San Francisco’s Mission Bay.

The ULI Terwilliger Center for Housing has announced two winners for this year’s Jack Kemp Excellence in Affordable and Workforce Housing Award and three winners for the Center’s Award for Innovation in Attainable Housing. “ULI’s Terwilliger Center for Housing is excited to present the 2025 winners of the Kemp and Innovation awards,” said Aimee Witteman, Chief Impact Officer at ULI. “Each winner is showing the industry how to create more inclusive and affordable communities through housing production.”

Third edition evaluates top 30 global powerhouses report reveals world’s leading urban hubs rise in popularity post pandemic. Challenges include new economic conditions, rising costs, adaptation to hybrid work, innovation gaps, the climate imperative, and transition to social, mixed-use districts.

A new report by the construction scheduling platform Planera shows which U.S. states are adding the most new housing in 2025.

The ongoing challenges in decarbonizing skyscrapers, warehouses, apartments, and myriad other types of buildings were a key topic during ULI’s 3^rd Real Estate Developer & Utility Convening on September 22—part of Climate Week NYC, the largest climate conference outside of the United Nations’ COP.

The 2026 Emerging Trends in Real Estate® Asia Pacific report, published jointly by ULI and PwC found a mood of cautious optimism among real estate professionals; however, respondents described considerable disparities in markets and sectors across the region. Tokyo was ranked as the top city for investment in the Emerging Trends survey, top of the table for the third consecutive year, followed by Singapore, Sydney, Osaka, and Seoul.

Few properties in South Florida, or ones well beyond the area, embody vision and resilience quite like Pier Sixty-Six. With its unmistakable spire-crowned tower, set along Fort Lauderdale’s storied Intracoastal Waterway, the landmark has defined the city’s skyline for more than half a century. As a multi-billion-dollar redevelopment of this 32 acre (13 ha) waterfront is now complete, Pier Sixty-Six stands as a model for how iconic real estate assets can be reborn, honoring their history while shaping the next century of urban waterfront development.

“The primary advantage every modular project has, if you do it right, is time savings,” said Mark Donahue—principal, design, for Lowney Architecture—during the “Offsite Evolved: How Today’s Prefab, Modular, and 3D-Printing Solutions Deliver Proven Speed, Savings, and Scale” panel at the ULI Fall Meeting in San Francisco. “You can, on a, say, 24-month construction project, save six to eight weeks.”

Guy Kawasaki—chief evangelist at Canva, former chief evangelist for Apple, and bestselling author—summed up insights gleaned from his years in tech and as host of the Remarkable People podcast, interviewing such luminaries as Margaret Atwood, Tony Fauci, Jane Goodall, and Steve Wozniak.

The city of Sugar Land has always stood out amid the sprawling metropolis of Houston, Texas. Located just south of downtown Houston, Sugar Land was named for the large sugar factory that operated for more than a century before operations ended in the early 2000s.

The 2025 Lewis Center Sustainability Forum, held during the ULI Fall Meeting in San Francisco, explored ways that local leaders in planning, policy, and development are advancing urban strength and adaptability amid increasing climate and social stresses.

ULI’s Global Sustainability Outlook, launched in 2021 by the Randall Lewis Center, has become the organization’s annual barometer on the sustainability topics shaping real estate and land use. Each year, the report distills insights from global industry leaders to identify the top issues most likely to influence strategic decision-making in the year ahead and beyond.

Whether you’re planning for the coming week, year, or even decade, the key question to ask is: What’s next? But in an era both fraught with uncertainty and brimming with opportunity, it is an increasingly complicated question to answer.

Around the turn of the 21st century, downtown Kansas City, Missouri, faced challenges familiar to many American cities: abandoned buildings and surface parking lots filled 10 core blocks despite multiple redevelopment attempts dating to the 1960s. The downtown residential population was sparse, and some 60,000 downtown office workers made haste for the suburbs at 5 o’clock each weekday.

As congregations across North America grapple with shrinking membership and aging facilities, a new opportunity is emerging: transforming faith-owned land into affordable housing and community-serving spaces. At the 2025 ULI Fall Meeting in San Francisco, panelists in the session “Spiritual Brownfields: Declining Congregations and Opportunities for Housing on Faith-Owned Land” explored how churches and developers are partnering to bring mission-driven housing to underused sacred sites.

At the 2025 ULI Fall Meeting in San Francisco, leaders from across the development and construction industries discussed how they are adapting to a volatile yet stabilizing housing landscape in a session called “Report from the Field: Wrestling with the Cost of Housing Construction.” Despite headlines about tariffs, labor shortages, and inflation, the panelists agreed that the cost environment has settled into what one called a “new normal.”