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Tightening availability of tech talent in leading markets has spurred hiring momentum in smaller and upstart markets in the United States and Canada—such as Tucson, Arizona, and Waterloo, Ontario—as expanding tech employers seek additional labor pools, according to CBRE’s annual Scoring Tech Talentreport.

Amazon’s choice to locate a second headquarters in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area is highlighting the region’s need to provide an ever-increasing number of educated workers to fill new technology jobs each year. While many groups are working to address this issue, the Greater Washington Partnership (GWP) has launched a well-funded effort to “create impact at scale.” GWP’s Capital CoLAB—which stands for Collaborative of Leaders in Academia and Business—is moving quickly to carry out its mission and already has garnered more than $6 million in grants.

Incentivized by city parking policies, private developers provide fewer parking spaces or increase density in new projects.

A week after the release of a new ULI report on urban heat effects and the built environment, a ULI Washington event focused on how the city is planning for and responding to urban heat issues. While Washington, D.C., is in many ways a leader on this issue, speakers agreed that equity issues need to be addressed in addition to specific policy changes.

In June, a group of 125 of Denver’s public-, private-, and nonprofit-sector leaders came to study Copenhagen’s brand of sustainable urbanism with the Denver Downtown Partnership (DDP) Urban Exploration program. The DDP study group included 61 members of ULI Colorado, Denver Mayor Michael B. Hancock, several Denver City Council members, and city and county staff members. The study tour explored the city of Copenhagen “through three lenses: livability, equity, and economic innovation, in which growth goes hand-in-hand with quality of life,” said one official.

Ten adaptive use projects turn vintage buildings into hospitality uses.

Worldwide, this past July was the hottest month on record, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. A new ULI report, Scorched: Extreme Heat and Real Estate, notes that such rising temperatures and excessive heat waves are already affecting urban development and reviews strategies that can help mitigate the effects on communities.

The Washington Housing Initiative wants to put capital to work to preserve a dwindling supply of workforce housing across the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, bringing together a large group of public and private stakeholders—including experienced multifamily developers, owners, and operators—to create a strategic model addressing the workforce housing shortage that can be shared broadly with other communities battling the same problem.

Interest rates have been on a roller-coaster ride over the last year, but cap rates are largely unchanged. The result of these moves is that cap rate spreads relative to the safe investments in the 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds have moved back to the levels seen in 2017. Given everything that has changed over the last year—as well as everything that has not—there may be room for cap rate spreads to move lower.

A new generation of innovators in commercial real estate is taking inspiration from—and even going beyond—the hospitality industry’s focus on customer service and satisfaction to invent new ways to make residential and office tenants happier.

A ULI Advisory Services panelists shares learnings from his experience on a recent ULI Advisory Services panel working with the city of Miami and the Miami Downtown Development Authority on its waterfront resilience efforts.

Under the Clean Energy D.C. Omnibus Amendment Act, the District is planning to move entirely to renewable electricity by 2032, with the goal of cutting the city’s greenhouse gas emissions in half by that year as part of its broader commitment to becoming entirely carbon neutral by 2050. To meet those goals, building owners will be required to make energy retrofits on about half of the buildings in the city. To help owners prepare for these changes, ULI partnered with the DowntownDC Business Improvement District for an Advisory Services panel in July.

The Energy Foundation has awarded ULI, via the ULI Foundation, a $200,000 grant to promote activities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as part of a partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Natural Resources Defense Council. With this grant, the Institute will facilitate the engagement of its district councils, which serve members at the local level, in activities related to the American Cities Climate Challenge.

The wave of interest in well-being in the United Kingdom is expected to translate into significant investment over the next three years, according to ULI research released in the report Picture of Health: The Growing Role of Wellbeing in Commercial Real Estate Investment Decision-making. The report was released this month at an event in Birmingham, England, by the ULI U.K. Sustainability Forum to highlight the rise of well-being investment in commercial buildings.

Online video game competitions are moving out of the basement—and taking hold as the new professional sport.

Washington, D.C., has the best city park system in the United States, according to the Trust for Public Land’s eighth annual ParkScore index, which was released in May by the nonprofit organization. Saint Paul ranked second, and three-time defending champion Minneapolis dropped to third.

No introduction required for the Empire State Building, likely the most famous office building in the world. Already an icon and a historic landmark, it is also becoming a symbol of the future, thanks to a showcase renovation that overhauled the bones of the 88-year-old structure, and ongoing efforts to implement ULI’s Tenant Energy Optimization Program (TEOP), the focus of a half-day event in that building in July.

According to U.S. Census Bureau estimates, the population of Washington, D.C., topped 700,000 residents last year, the first time since 1975. But the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments estimates a shortfall of more than 200,000 housing units by 2025 to meet the projected job growth and transportation system performance in the urban core of the D.C. region. A ULI Washington Impact Task Force report addressed two main barriers to opportunities for supply growth and attainability: navigating the entitlement and approval processes, as well as gaining community acceptance through engagement and participation.

In many American downtown areas and commercial centers, improvement districts are used as tools for revitalization, placemaking, and economic development. They improve the street presence and provide important marketing services for local businesses. But what if they could tackle larger infrastructure needs? Better yet, what if commercial real estate owners and investors could attract billions of public dollars and, in the process, create a new way to build roads, interchanges, and other important projects?

At the ULI U.K. Annual Conference, a range of speakers from across Europe provided fresh perspectives on how the real estate industry is evolving to meet the needs of both the economy and society, including use of smarter sensor technology, creation of micro-units for both housing and retail space, as well as assistance for British cities in tapping sources of capital for regeneration.

The Chile-based global architect has made extraordinary contributions to the design of affordable housing, public spaces, infrastructure, and transportation.

New ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager building performance calculation adjustments, which will take effect on July 22, will cause a slight increase in cold-weather buildings’ ENERGY STAR scores, reflecting feedback from the real estate industry on an unanticipated large drop in ENERGY STAR ratings over the past year.

The city of Detroit used an online platform to get more community feedback on the city’s first Sustainability Action Agenda. In addition to traditional community outreach, community members were solicited with a multilingual campaign using text messages, a web platform, and traditional yard signs, helping the city gather input from thousands of respondents, more than would be possible at a traditional community meeting.

Though Washington, D.C., has seen significant growth in multifamily development in the past decade, neighborhoods zoned for single-family homes could also benefit from increased density. In addition, the District itself could benefit from the creation of more affordable housing close to transit and employers. That is one reason why ULI convened a nationwide team of experts to devise strategies for bringing affordable housing to one of the Washington’s toniest planning districts.

Wise choices in fixtures, finishes, and functions may draw guests’ attention.

The population of Columbus, Ohio, is growing rapidly, now surpassing that of San Francisco, according to U.S. Census Bureau data from 2018. Central Ohio is on a path to become a region of 3 million people by 2050. In light of the expected growth, local leaders, including the chairman of ULI Columbus Yaromir Steiner, commissioned the Corridor Concepts Report to better understand how to promote thoughtful development.

At the 2019 ULI Florida Summit, futurist Greg Lindsay, a futurist and senior fellow with the NewCities nonprofit organization, detailed change agents of future development including the electric scooter mania, shops without checkouts, and “urban cabins.” Lindsay described broadly how the disruption of retail, office, residential, and transportation will continue around the globe—and, in some cases, increase.

How are tourism trends shaking up the real estate industry?

The cover package for the 2019 Summer issue is titled “Hospitality: New services make a difference across property types.” Other topics include “Development: Esports Arenas,” “Zoning: Benefits of Car Sharing,” and “Hotels & Resorts: Buying into Sustainability.

Georgia Tech’s Eco-Commons project demonstrates cutting-edge sustainable building concepts in partnership with the Kendeda Foundation. Members of ULI Atlanta were recently included in a hard-hat tour of the site, which is under construction.