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.

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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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