Patrick L. Phillips

From 2009 to early 2018, Patrick L. Phillips served as the Global Chief Executive Officer of the Urban Land Institute (ULI). ULI, which currently has more than 200 employees and a budget of nearly $75 million, is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and has offices throughout the world. As Global CEO, Phillips worked with ULI’s member leaders to lead all aspects of ULI’s strategy, mission delivery, resource allocation, and fiscal performance. Phillips, a longtime member of ULI, has had a career in the economic analysis of real estate and land use that spans more than 30 years. Prior to taking the position as the top staff executive at ULI, he was President and Chief Executive Officer of ERA AECOM (formerly Economics Research Associates). In that role, he coordinated all aspects of ERA’s organization, strategy, business development, and service delivery. His own consulting practice focused specifically on the intersection of private investment and public policy. To further expand ERA’s reach and impact, Phillips guided the successful sale of the company in 2007 to AECOM, a globally renowned provider of professional technical and management support services to a broad range of industries, including land use, transportation, environmental and energy. His work at ERA AECOM focused on development strategy, development economics and feasibility analysis, and transaction-related services for real estate investors and developers, public agencies, financial institutions, universities, and non-profit organizations. This involved all major categories of urban land use, with an emphasis on the market, economic, and financial aspects of a new generation of downtown and suburban mixed-use projects. Under Phillip’s direction, ERA provided consulting services for such notable development projects as Mockingbird Station in Dallas, Atlantic Station in Atlanta, and the repositioning of Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza; as well as public planning projects for the Hudson Yards in New York City and Houston’s Buffalo Bayou. Phillips has often advised public agencies and non-profit organizations on issues related to public-private partnerships for economic development. He is a frequent speaker on urban development issues, and is the author or co-author of eight books and numerous articles. In 2005, Phillips led a nationally prominent economic development team as part of the ULI advisory services panel making recommendations on post-Katrina rebuilding efforts in New Orleans. Patrick teaches at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design Executive Education Program and at the Carey Business School of Johns Hopkins University. His academic training includes a graduate degree in public management and finance from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

Since the launch of ULI’s Building Healthy Places Initiative a year ago, one of the most important lessons we have learned is the extent to which the work of our members influences all aspects of how well people live—in terms of both physical and mental health.
I am very pleased to report that ULI’s recent Spring Meeting in Vancouver was an extraordinary success.
One of ULI’s great strengths is the predictive nature of its work, helping members plan business strategies by identifying trends with stickiness—not just changes in design and development, but outside forces that will affect the built environment for decades to come.
ULI CEO Patrick Phillips comments on President Obama’s State of the Union address, which touched on improving infrastructure and mitigating the impact of climate change, from a land use perspective.
Every ULI Fall Meeting raises the bar for the next one, and our 2013 meeting in Chicago did just that—with more than 5,500 members and guests in attendance, record levels of sponsorship from the top companies in the industry, and three days of programming that included many standing-room-only sessions.
This past August, the Washington Post reported on the exploding popularity of D.C.’s three-year-old Capital Bikeshare program, pointing out that bike docking stations throughout the city are having trouble meeting demand from both residents and visitors seeking to bike from one place to another.
ULI has long been known as a source of solid intelligence on demographic trends and their relationship to land use and development. The Institute also has a long history of supporting more compact, mixed-use development patterns that reduce the dependence on cars.
By many measurements, the recent 2013 ULI Spring Meeting was a major success—record-breaking attendance; content-rich sessions; news coverage from the largest-ever press contingent for our Spring Meeting; record-high sponsorships; and a succession of dynamic keynote speakers emphasizing the rewards of innovative business strategies.
Each year, ULI’s impressive lineup of global meetings kicks off in Europe with our real estate investment and development conference, held in Paris during the winter. The 2013 event, held February 5 and 6, drew more than 500 industry leaders from 24 countries around the world—reflecting a steady increase in the geographic diversity of attendees since we started hosting the meeting 17 years ago.
ULI is starting the new year with an extraordinary expansion of our reach and influence on a global basis, an accomplishment made possible by your support of the Institute and your belief in our ability to make a positive difference.
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