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A Seattle developer pioneers a flexible process to bring live/work/make/eat/shop uses to a superblock site on Portland’s inner urban fringe.

In the past three years, the California Legislature has passed more than a dozen housing reforms addressing a swath of issues, including tenant protections, rent gouging, production of accessory dwelling units (ADUs), streamlined permitting for affordable and market-rate housing, new funding sources, and more. Though the pace may seem slow, there are signs of progress and hope for more in the future, panelists said at a ULI San Francisco event.

The top five Canadian real estate markets to watch in 2020 are Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Halifax, and Montreal, according to Emerging Trends in Real Estate ^® 2020.

A wayfinding project enhances identity in Mount Prospect, Illinois.

First movers on using mass timber for both structural and design elements are seeing a growing wave of projects lining up before them. The regulatory environment is also adapting while the business model is expanding.

How can public/private partnerships succeed in a politically fractious era?

A ban on natural gas connections in new low-rise residences is effective January 1 in Berkeley, California. More cities are likely to follow. How are developers responding to the fossil fuel-free future?

Improved energy efficiency of class B and C office buildings can be achieved with relatively simple, lower-cost measures that not only enhance building performance, but also boost property values to make the buildings more competitive with class A space, new ULI research shows.

Panelists talked about how the San Antonio region is faring versus other cities in Texas in attracting talented workers and corporate office tenants and where it can improve compared with cities of a similar size.

With tax rules clarified, will the program deliver the promise of increasing development in underserved areas?

China is a nation of more than 1 billion “digital-first” consumers, Jeffrey Towson, managing partner at Towson Group and a Peking University professor, said at a recent ULI event in Shanghai. Because these consumers are starting to act like an interconnected network—influencing each other and generating fresh ways of doing transactions—they are shaping how almost all companies do business.

An area in Midtown Miami, split between the Wynwood and Edgewater neighborhoods, will be the study site for the 18th annual ULI Hines Student Competition.

There is no end in sight for the long-lived U.S. economic and real estate market expansion, according to leading real estate economists. These projections are based on a special year-end version of the “ULI Real Estate Economic Forecast,” prepared by the ULI Center for Capital Markets and Real Estate. The forecast is based on a survey completed in December by 27 economists/analysts at 24 leading real estate organizations.

Speaking at an event in New York City, Dror Poleg, a former real estate and technology executive and co-chair of ULI New York’s Technology and Innovation Council, said shifts in real estate often result from overlooked factors that alter its value, beginning in the faraway emergence of landlord/tenant relations out of feudalism and stretching to the innovations of today.

Some of the best minds in commercial real estate seemed a lot less worried at the 26th annual ULI/McCoy Symposium on Real Estate Finance, held in December in New York City. Participants’ top message: investors keep pouring their money into office towers, apartment buildings, and other real estate in the United States despite high prices, worries that the U.S. economy could fall into a recession, and the uncertainty that accompanies a presidential election year.

Improved connectivity leads to better cities and more profitable buildings, and data can play a crucial role in analyzing that connectivity and planning to maximize it, said a keynote speaker at the ULI Asia Pacific Leadership Convivium in Singapore.

When e-commerce first became entrenched in China, it seemed to sound the death knell for traditional retail. Sporting venues and other cultural attractions are helping bring foot traffic to the experiential retail of the future, said panelists at a ULI event in Shanghai.

Members of ULI’s Technology and Real Estate Council discuss the value of property technologies for real estate developers and investors—technologies that offer the most for building tenants, ways of sorting out the hype surrounding property technologies, promising technologies still in the process of being realized, and other related trends.

Members of ULI’s Asia Pacific Tech Council discuss the new council’s areas of focus, the interface between technology startups and the real estate industry, the challenges of incorporating rapidly evolving technologies, the promise of big data, and related trends.

Members of ULI Europe’s Technology and Real Estate Product Council discuss the new council’s areas of focus, approaches to evaluating and implementing new technologies, ways to improve understanding between technology startups and the real estate industry, promising current and future technologies, and related trends.

Singapore-based developer CapitaLand is harvesting data to boost the revenues of its retail tenants and to help it locate future malls. Speaking at the ULI Asia Pacific Convivium, Chris Chong, managing director at CapitaLand Retail, said that the company uses data to boost both footfall and spending for tenants in its malls, which will ultimately benefit the landlord.

In 2017, the New York–based Northwood Investors spent $1.2 billion to purchase Ballantyne Corporate Park, a highly successful office property in Charlotte—the single-largest real estate transaction in North Carolina’s history at the time.

The 125-year-old parks system in Kansas City, Missouri, is a source of much civic pride. But the system also played a role in creating divisions in the community. A century later, these effects still reverberate in the parks system as development trends, zoning policies, and financial challenges have perpetuated inequity, according to panelists speaking at a ULI Advisory Services presentation in Kansas City, Missouri.

Technology and innovation were hot topics at the 2019 ULI Fall Meeting in Washington, D.C. These are some of the insights that speakers and attendees shared.

Whereas the commercial sector increasingly is abandoning its old analog ways and shifting to property technology, or proptech, the buzzword for building-related applications, the real revolution will come when commercial real estate companies not only have amassed large amounts of data, but also have figured out how to combine information from different apps and turn that data into actionable intelligence, said panelists speaking at the 2019 ULI Fall Meeting.

At ULI South Carolina’s Capital Markets Conference, panelists outlined strategies that are leveraging the strengths of the private sector to create and preserve affordable housing in areas experiencing rapid growth.

Affordable housing challenges are not limited to urban centers or technology hubs. Smaller towns often struggle to house their workforces and—perhaps less noticeably, but no less acutely—so do agricultural operations. Agriculture employs 11 percent of the U.S. workforce, while also contributing to manufacturing, wholesaling, and retailing. The sector is also suffering from a dire labor shortage that has the potential to disrupt the entire food chain.

Ian Wilson, senior vice president of nongaming operations and chief operating officer, Marina Bay Sands, addressed the 2019 ULI Asia Pacific Leadership Convivium, explaining how the resort-casino operator uses data in its operations.

Which emerging real estate technologies will become the must-haves, and which will be the near misses? You can take your chances on a $100 doorbell, but if you are investing millions in a property or trying to run a profitable business, you cannot afford to waste resources on fads. Those two questions—what are the unintended consequences, and which technologies have staying power—are themes running throughout this special issue of Urban Land.

Positive news for Greater Philadelphia going into 2020 includes job growth, a growing population of young people, strong demand for apartments, and a booming, new biotechnology business, said panelists at a ULI Philadelphia event.