Mixed-use projects have the potential to transform urban areas and create long-term value. But as members of a panel at the 2015 ULI Spring Meeting in Houston explained, it is a lot trickier than it might seem to create a successful synergy of uses.
In a discussion between four mayors and former mayors including Seattle, Pittsburgh, Omaha, and South Bay, Florida, participants identified multiple trends that pose difficult challenges for city governments—but which also potentially provide opportunities.
Public/private partnerships have helped drive Houston’s transformation in recent years. But in order for that formula to succeed, energy industry entrepreneur and civic philanthropist Richard “Rich” Kinder warns that it is essential for private donors to show the same sort of toughness and financial savvy that helped them make their business fortunes.
As the only major U.S. city without formal zoning, Houston has a reputation as a freewheeling place where anything goes. But in truth, a complex patchwork of public and private regulation has evolved to impose order.
While commercial real estate has occasionally lagged behind other business sectors in use of emerging technologies such as three-dimensional virtual reality environments and real-time data mining, panelists at the ULI Fall Meeting said such advances promise to reshape how developers and property managers function.
Aggregation and analysis of open data—that is, information that is freely available via the internet—are revolutionizing fields such as science and government, said panelists at the ULI Fall Meeting, but it is still anathema to many in the real estate industry.
The nascent, fast-growing phenomenon of crowdfunding in real estate financing hasn’t yet scratched the surface of its potential, according to participants in a panel at ULI’s 2014 Fall Meeting in New York City.
In an address that concluded this year’s ULI Fall Meeting in New York City, author and journalist Walter Isaacson extolled the importance of the urban built space in fostering creativity and technological progress.
Escalating climate change poses a paradoxical dilemma when it comes to water, according to speakers in a panel on the subject at the 2014 ULI Fall Meeting in New York City.
