The wave of interest in well-being in the United Kingdom is expected to translate into significant investment over the next three years, according to ULI research released in the report Picture of Health: The Growing Role of Wellbeing in Commercial Real Estate Investment Decision-making. The report was released this month at an event in Birmingham, England, by the ULI U.K. Sustainability Forum to highlight the rise of well-being investment in commercial buildings.

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.

“There is great confusion about what the future will be,” legendary architect Jan Gehl said at ULI Europe’s Real Estate Forum in Copenhagen in June.

Industry leaders speaking at the recent ULI Asia Pacific Summit said that green financing and new building materials are helping them make their developments more sustainable without hurting their bottom line.

With rental rates skyrocketing in many U.S. cities, more states are exploring ways to protect tenants and address the mounting issues of affordable housing, without wading into the controversial morass of rent control, said panelists during the ULI Housing Opportunity 2019 conference.

The ULI Greenprint Center for Building Performance, a worldwide alliance of leading real estate owners, investors, and financial institutions committed to reducing carbon emissions across the global property industry, has announced the addition of three new members: Kilroy Realty, the Howard Hughes Corporation, and Morgan Creek Ventures.

Avenue Place/Avenue Terrace in Houston; Clybourn 1200 in Chicago; Keauhou Lane in Honolulu; Conway Center in Washington, D.C.; and Harbor Place Residences in Haverhill, Massachusetts, were announced as winners of the 2018 Jack Kemp Excellence in Affordable and Workforce Housing Award. The State of New York Mortgage Finance Agency and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority are joint winners of the 2018 Robert C. Larson Housing Policy Leadership Award.

One of the most difficult challenges for those seeking to adopt emerging technologies in commercial real estate is justifying the cost of implementing such measures. A recent ULI event in Boston highlighted the benefits of the evolving standards on health and wellness by five industry practitioners.

The growing popularity of building for health and wellness and the value derived from it are explored in a new ULI report, The Business Case for Healthy Buildings: Insights from Early Adopters. The report documents how real estate leaders worldwide are increasingly seeking to create environments that support healthy lifestyles in both workspaces and homes.

A new report, Supporting Smart Urban Development: Successful Investing in Density, is the result of collaboration between a powerful group of innovative real estate investors and developers that are actively building the cities of the future. Collectively, this group owns or manages over US $300 billion worth of real estate assets worldwide.