Author: Anthony Paletta
Anthony Paletta writes the Spaces column for the Wall Street Journal and contributes to The Guardian, Bookforum, Metropolis, The Daily Beast, Architectural Record, and a variety of other publications.
Articles by Anthony Paletta
- Confronting COVID-19: Addressing Housing Affordability and Homelessness in Southern California
Published on October 12, 2020 in
A recent ULI Los Angeles virtual event titled “Housing Now: Shelter, Zoning, and Beyond,” brought together land use experts from the private and public sectors to discuss the housing affordability issue in Southern California, which parallels that in many large cities in the United States. - In Its 20th Year, ULI Los Angeles’s Urban Marketplace Looks at Progress and a Vision for the Future
Published on September 17, 2020 in
ULI Los Angeles, celebrating the 20th year of its Urban Marketplace program, has launched a series of five online events around the theme of “A Reflection on Progress and a Vision for the Future,” with the first held in early September. The principal session consisted of a conversation between Michael Banner, president and CEO of Los Angeles LDC, and Miguel Pastor, director of the University of Southern California Program for Environmental and Regional Equity, focusing on helping disadvantaged neighborhoods access capital and positive signs for the future. - Finding Solutions to Maintain Toronto’s Densest Affordable Housing
Published on March 13, 2020 in
Aging high-rise residential towers in the city of Toronto are home to nearly 13 percent of the current population, but are falling behind on maintenance. A ULI Advisory Services panel was invited to evaluate a range of solutions. - Leveraging $30 Billion in Upgrades to New York City’s Airports
Published on February 26, 2020 in
Panelists at a ULI New York event shared some of the plans for the future by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to leverage both public and private investments to update the three airports that serve New York City. - Rethinking Real Estate: What the Past Teaches Us about the Future of Land Use
Published on January 06, 2020 in
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. - Empowering Tenants to Build Out Sustainably with the Tenant Energy Optimization Program
Published on July 23, 2019 in
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. - Bringing the Amenities and Ease of Use of High-End Hotels to Other Industries
Published on July 08, 2019 in
Companies are increasingly borrowing practices from the hospitality industry in order to attract and retain tenants and residents of all sorts. To address the topic, ULI New York convened a panel titled “The Hotelification of Real Estate,” held in June in Manhattan, featuring a range of experts with specialties spanning commercial, residential, and mixed-use development. - Revisiting the Open-Office Revolution with Top Tech Employers
Published on March 14, 2019 in
The conversion to primarily open-office floor plans over the past decade is now reaching adolescence, and like many revolutions has created problems as well as possibilities, panelists said at a ULI New York event in February. - Building on New York’s Case for More Sustainable Waterfronts
Published on March 26, 2018 in
The Waterfront Alliance, an organization encompassing hundreds of groups that have as their goal improving over 700 miles of shoreline in the New York/New Jersey area, has developed the Waterfront Edge Design Guidelines (WEDG) for real estate projects and sites. WEDG launched the nationally applicable version of the rating system in March after initially piloting a New York–specific set of guidelines. A small number of real estate projects and parks in New York City have been certified under the guidelines, including the Domino Sugar factory site in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which is being redeveloped by Two Trees, and both Brooklyn Bridge Park and Greenpoint Landing. - Future of Global Waterfronts Is More Mixed Uses, Cleaner Air and Water
Published on October 02, 2017 in
The urban waterfront is the site of countless challenges and opportunities, one that must accommodate housing, commerce, and recreation without extinguishing traditional industries and port facilities. The Asia Society and AECOM are collaborating on a series of “living conversations” titled “Imagine 2060” that are designed to address a range of issues that cities do and will face, and the inaugural series of events focuses on that complex question of urban waterfronts. Land use experts recently gathered in New York City to discuss these challenges facing the United States and the greater New York region. - Expanding the Usage of New York City’s Governors Island
Published on July 21, 2017 in
Since the donation of the 172-acre (70 ha) Governors Island to New York City in 2003, most of the work on the island has focused on expanding its recreational assets. With an impressive amount of parkland now established, a new push is afoot to expand the island’s uses, both recreational and otherwise. - How Stormwater Retention Paid Dividends for Three Sites
Published on July 05, 2017 in
From a park in Washington, D.C., to a former department store warehouse in Portland, Oregon, to a Whole Foods site in suburban Raleigh, North Carolina, these diverse projects are linked by a common ingenuity in handling stormwater. - Profit- and Market-Driven Solutions for Sustainable Real Estate
Published on March 09, 2017 in
While U.S. policies on energy may shift in the coming years, panelists speaking at an event in New York City in February said that no backtracking is in sight regarding the integration of sustainability into the best practices of the real estate industry. - In Print: Scaling Infrastructure and Infrastructural Monument
Published on September 15, 2016 in
Infrastructure was accordingly a rich theme for the MIT Center for Advanced Urbanism’s two inaugural conferences, whose proceedings are now available in two intriguing volumes, concerning both the rote realities of appropriate functionality, Scaling Infrastructure, and the possibilities of civic and connective consequentiality, Infrastructural Monument. - In Print: Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea
Published on September 15, 2016 in
The transmission of ideas and concepts across wildly different societies is usually a tale of progress; Mitchell Duneier’s Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea is not one of those stories. - In Print: A Burglar’s Guide to the City
Published on August 29, 2016 in Planning & Design
The premise of Geoff Manaugh’s A Burglar’s Guide to the City is simple; burglars understand cities, and the buildings that constitute them, better than you do. Manaugh has been exploring a dizzying range of theoretical and esoterically vocational perspectives on the city for well over a decade on his invaluable BLDGBLOG. - In Print: The Road Taken: The History and Future of America’s Infrastructure
Published on August 01, 2016 in
The word infrastructure, which originated during the 1920s, was unusual enough to still appear in quotation marks in the Wall Street Journal as late as the 1980s. Henry Petroski’s The Road Taken: The History and Future of America’s Infrastructure is an exhaustive tour of the tremendous variety of built works encompassed by the term. - Four Concepts Reimagining the Future of Modern Memorials
Published on June 30, 2016 in
The competition was intended to “reimagine how we think about, feel, and experience memorials," eliciting entries that both aim to fill in topics and themes that have not been commemorated and to anticipate those that might merit future attention. - In Print: Airport Urbanism: Infrastructure and Mobility in Asia
Published on June 13, 2016 in
The gleaming white terminal on the cover suggests a book much like many others, outlining a future (and present) of grand planning for the prosperity brought and dispatched via the wonders of air traffic. But this is not that book: it is a fascinating examination of the many elements that such forecasts leave out or overlook. - In Print: Where Are the Women Architects?
Published on April 14, 2016 in
Historian Despina Stratigakos’s book is a nuanced effort “to track an unfinished dialogue that has haunted architecture—in a cycle of acknowledging and abandoning its gender issues—for a long time,” as she writes in her introduction. - In Print: Cognitive Architecture: Designing for How We Respond to the Built Environment
Published on February 29, 2016 in
Ann Sussman and Justin B. Hollander’s book is an effort to shape a body of biological and psychological conclusions about architecture into a framework for thinking about just what deeper traits shape human preferences about the built environment. - In Print: Hot to Cold: An Odyssey of Architectural Adaptation
Published on November 23, 2015 in
The map inside the front cover of Bjarke Ingels’s new book is a rapid corrective to anyone tempted to reckon his Alexander-like conquest of the globe before turning 40 years old as merely figurative, exploring commissions from Lappland in northern Scandinavia to Doha in Qatar and dozens of coordinates in between. - The Evolving Role of Architectural Design Competitions
Published on October 02, 2015 in
Competitions, as television programming has shown us, usually extract reliable entertainment from participants in return for the mere promise of exposure. - Added Dimensionality in the Modern Workspace
Published on November 04, 2014 in
Prevailing modes of workplace organization have and continue to be upended by new enterprises, designers, and clients, according to panelists at the 2014 ULI Fall Meeting in New York City. - Green from Green: Creating Value from Private Management of the Public Realm
Published on November 04, 2014 in
America's golden age for parks is translating into gilded surroundings, according to panelists at a concurrent session at the ULI Fall Meeting. - Brooklyn Renaissance: Transformation of an Outer Borough
Published on October 29, 2014 in
The borough’s notoriety may obscure the very practical origin of the borough’s resurgence, observed panelists at the ULI Fall Meeting. As Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, commented, its cachet has been sudden, but the “roots have been decades in the making.” - New York City’s Century of Growth
Published on October 28, 2014 in
At times, New York City has trailblazed urban solutions of astonishing foresight; at other times, it has had to be dragged to confronting urban exigencies by imminent disaster, said panelists at the ULI Fall Meeting. In either case, New York has been in a constant state of innovation and remaking over the last century.