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As cities confront the housing crisis, they face intersecting challenges: opposition not only to affordable-housing development but often to any development; spiraling financing and construction costs; outdated zoning that stifles or misplaces growth; egregious bureaucratic barriers; and issues around displacement and historic preservation. But some cities have an asset that can serve as a testing ground for harmonizing urgent priorities: their downtown districts.

In a period short on opportunities and long on challenges, design matters even more. Good design principles are always worth employing, whatever the development climate, but three key design aspects pertain in particular: alliance, resilience, and quality.

The ULI Foundation Honor Roll recognizes donors based upon their cumulative lifetime giving. The ULI Foundation’s recognition societies honor and thank members and friends who have committed to supporting the Urban Land Institute generously and consistently. Members of these societies enjoy several benefits, including invitations to member-exclusive events and ULI Foundation communications.

Leading SFR companies are developing strategies to tackle social equity, land use, decarbonization, and resilience for maximum impact.

Ten projects deliver compact residential spaces that offer more affordable city living options, foster community, and minimize environmental impacts.

Experts speak about the near-term prospects for converting office buildings into multifamily housing, best practices for evaluating conversion potential, innovative ways the public sector can support these projects, and other related trends.

Many publicly traded homebuilders are now using a “land light” strategy, working with third-party land asset owners to identify opportunities in the path of growth, and studying migration patterns, development, and economic vitality. In doing so, they take possession of the land as “just-in-time” inventory and keep their capital focused on building more efficiently and expanding market share.

Seven prominent industry associations have come together to accelerate tackling carbon emissions through carbon pricing

The current hype around artificial intelligence (AI) has many in the real estate industry dreaming about harnessing it to assist with investment decisions. But there’s a giant stumbling block: too much bad data.

Donations to the ULI Foundation support a wide variety of programs, initiatives, and groups, and among the options, donors may choose to
direct their gifts to their local ULI District Council. Three donors who have made recent substantial contributions to their respective District
Councils—Jack Cohen, Marc Pollack, and Greg West—highlight the impact individuals can have on their local communities. Their gifts, ranging from $15,000 to $100,000, enable their local District Councils to advance ULI’s mission priorities and carry out community outreach, all while helping members build relationships and share educational and other resources in their area.

Headlines have long proclaimed the demise of the American shopping mall. Despite undeniable shifts in the retail landscape, the truth about these spaces is more nuanced. These massive parcels often stand in prime locations and therefore hold massive potential to sidestep scrap-and-redevelop and to truly evolve.

According to the Pew Research Center, between 1971 and 2021, the number of people living in multigenerational households quadrupled, while the number of people in other living situations is less than double what it was. The share of the U.S. population living in multigenerational households in 2021 was 18 percent.

This was the resounding conclusion from two Homeless to Housed (H2H)-hosted programs during Urban Land Institute (ULI) springtime meetings. Furthermore, former Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton echoed this call to action in her ULI Spring Meeting plenary presentation during which she advocated for New York City to create more affordable housing immediately to sustain its vitality as a world-class city for all people.

It’s no secret that construction starts are down in the current market where higher interest rates are making it tough to pencil out new projects. But, for some developers, the bigger problem these days is sourcing equity versus debt.

Representatives from ULI Technical Assistance Efforts Share Updates on Implementation of Recommendations to Make Their Communities More Resilient

David R. Nelson, the influential founder and leader of a multidisciplined real estate development company and a longtime ULI member, has passed away at the age of 81.

The Veterans Community Project serves any veteran who took the oath to defend the Constitution, regardless of discharge status, length of service, or branch of service. The program strikes an effective balance between community and individual dignity, employing a robust combination of housing and services. As a result, the program has a high success rate of 85 percent in transitioning unhoused veterans to permanent housing.

As a growing number of real estate firms commit to decarbonizing their assets, securing green power is becoming an increasingly necessary step for achieving significant carbon reductions. For many owners, the most straightforward and cost-effective route to green power is sourcing directly through local utility providers. However, several barriers have made it difficult for real estate and utilities to collaborate and identify solutions for increasing the amount of green power flowing to the built environment, in ways that mutually benefits utility organizations.

The number of people experiencing homelessness grew by 12 percent in 2023—but Rosanne Haggerty, president and CEO of Community Solutions, a nonprofit recognized for developing innovative solutions to end homelessness, says homelessness is a solvable problem. Haggerty believes that real estate professionals are uniquely positioned to get everyone working toward the same goal of providing basic housing and infrastructure for unhoused people. Haggerty’s organization is taking advantage of increased awareness of the problem by partnering with corporations, banking institutions, government agencies, and philanthropists to help shelter unhoused people.

A redevelopment plan for a Seattle site presented by a team of Georgia Institute of Technology students has taken top honors in the 22nd annual ULI/Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition. The competition was created with a generous endowment from long-time ULI leader Gerald D. Hines, founder of the Hines real estate organization.

After developer Bruce Etkin, a past ULI Trustee and a current member of the ULI Foundation board, sold all of his company’s properties in 2021, he channeled his energy and attention to different challenges—one of them homelessness.

ULI has earned a 2023 ENERGY STAR® Partner of the Year Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the fourth consecutive year. The award recognizes ENERGY STAR® partner businesses and organizations in good standing that demonstrate superior leadership, innovation, and commitment to environmental protection through energy efficiency.

The third and final capital markets panel held during ULI’s Spring Meeting, in New York City in early March, focused on borrower experiences. Kyle Bolden, senior audit partner in the Real Estate Hospitality & Construction practice of Ernst & Young, moderated a panel on raising equity amid ongoing market uncertainty. The panelists were Brian Mutchler, managing director of Harrison Street; Jerome Nichols, president of Standard Real Estate Investments; and Jeff Rosen, a principal of Mag Partners.

Under the leadership of Chief Investment Officer Wes Fuller, Greystar, a vertically integrated real estate firm that owns, operates, and develops multifamily, student, and senior housing, began investing in international markets in 2013, including in Europe, Asia, and South America. The company’s robust institutional investment management platform now has a global presence in 249 markets.

Despite headwinds, debt funds continue to fill the void in commercial real estate financing.

A team from ESSEC Business School in France has been named the winner in this year’s prestigious ULI Hines Student Competition – Europe. The results were announced by ULI and Hines, the global real estate investor, developer, and property manager, following the final of the fifth annual pan-European competition for integrated and multidisciplinary urban regeneration.

In the first quarter of the year, we saw a palatable increase in financing requests from a variety of sponsors providing some optimism that real estate activity may be picking up. And while very few could be categorized as “good news” transactions, the vast majority were clearly indicative of what we are seeing in the market.

The implications of climate change are becoming hard to ignore. The frequency of natural disasters has increased significantly in recent years, with the United States experiencing an average cost of $18 billion–plus from climate disasters per year. As these kinds of events have grown more common, calculating climate risk has become a hugely important task for commercial property owners. The topic was the main theme during a panel discussion at the April 2024 Resilience Summit in New York City.

Developers of middle-income projects can’t use subsidy programs such as federal low-income housing tax credits (LIHTCs) to finance their plans. Middle-income developments also often don’t earn enough in rent to support conventional construction loans or attract equity investors.

Eight years ago, the landmark Paris Agreement kicked off a worldwide campaign to reduce carbon emissions. The targets set were big: slash emissions by 45 percent by 2030 and be net zero by 2050. So far, the world is not making enough progress on those lofty goals, and the progress that has been made has been very unevenly distributed. Experts from major real estate firms, including Boston Properties, CBRE, and Community Preservation Corporation, drove home the net zero transition’s importance during a panel discussion at the 2024 ULI Spring Meeting in New York City. They talked about the costs of getting to net zero, what lenders and owners are doing to get there, and the risk of not addressing climate change.