Located on the site of the former Ritz Theater, the South Grand Community Improvement District in St. Louis spearheaded the transformation of Ritz Park in 2014 from vacant lot to popular gathering spot for movies, concerts, plays, markets, and festivals. Unfortunately, the new space was devoid of shade, making it too uncomfortable for daytime use during the summer.

The creation of public space from unused, underused, or unequally shared linear spaces in urban areas has been happening for a long time. Major reference points in the architectural and planning worlds are Boston’s Emerald Necklace, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted (1878–1896); Freeway Park in Seattle (1972-1976); the Baltimore Inner Harbor (1963–1983); the Promenade Plantée in Paris (1987-1994); and the High Line in New York (2005–2019).

A redevelopment plan for a former industrial site in Cleveland presented by a team of Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology students has taken top honors in the 23rd annual ULI/Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition. This year’s competition asked students for proposals to create a vibrant, mixed-use, mixed-income area on a former industrial site in on Cleveland’s East Side.

Husband and wife architectural team Hans and Torrey Butzer were living in Berlin, Germany, in late 1996 when a contest in Progressive Architecture magazine caught their attention. The competition called for designing a memorial to the victims of the tragic bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.

TeamLHBK from the University of Cambridge in the UK has been named the winner of the sixth annual ULI Hines Student Competition—Europe.

As student housing needs evolve, developers are rethinking design, creating dynamic, experience-driven communities that promote connection and well-being.

In early February 2025, hundreds of stakeholders and real estate professionals gathered at DeSales University for a meeting sponsored by ULI Philadelphia and Lehigh Valley Planning Commission and supported by ULI’s Terwilliger Center for Housing and Lehigh County Commissioners. The first installment of a three-part Technical Assistance Panel (TAP), “Housing Supply and Attainability Strategy in the Lehigh Valley” aimed to open the conversation and further shape the technical assistance work to follow.

10 projects model ways to prepare the built environment for climate stresses and shocks

The third annual Urban Land Institute Award for Excellence was presented to Walt Disney World/Reedy Creek Improvement District (RCID) at ULI’s November meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Yesterday, more than 400 commercial real estate professionals and elected officials gathered at the National Building Museum for the third annual Future Forum, a regional conference for public and private-sector leaders.