The following ten projects—all completed during the past five years—include facilities that strengthen pedestrian links to waterfronts, renovated buildings that open up interiors to views and daylight, and a converted JCPenney department store.

How can raising the quality of architecture add value to real estate developments?

Downtown office properties are no longer disposable, throw-away structures with just a 30-year life span. Today, adaptive use initiatives are revitalizing buildings, changing the purpose of the towers to meet current market demands and extending the buildings’ useful life by many decades. At the 2016 ULI Fall Meeting in Dallas last month, panelists demonstrated the case for redeveloping downtown properties.

By using 3-D printers to build lightweight but strong plastic frameworks for conventional building materials such as concrete, builders may soon be able to create complex structures with unorthodox shapes and contours that would be difficult or even impossible with today’s construction methods, said a speaker at the ULI Fall Meeting in Dallas. And better yet, they will be able to fashion intricate, customized interiors and exteriors at no additional cost.

Dr. Cheong Koon Hean, a widely acclaimed architect and urban planner credited with shaping much of Singapore’s urban landscape, has been named the 2016 recipient of the ULI J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development. Dr. Cheong, the 17th Nichols laureate and the first from Asia, was honored during the 2016 ULI Fall Meeting in Dallas.

Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport is the most successful American template for how a major airport can become a core for real estate development and economic growth. Now, planning is taking it to a higher altitude.

New tech habits spur demand for creating privacy in open-plan homes.

One of two dozen research groups housed at MIT’s Media Lab, the Changing Places group is focused on developing new, more efficient, and creative mobility systems and ways of living and working in cities at a time when urban populations are growing, while the resources to sustain them are shrinking. Kent Larson leads the group and shared several of Changing Places’ projects during the closing keynote speech at the recent ULI Florida Summit in Miami.

National Football League team owners in January gave their blessing to plans to return the Rams to Los Angeles after a 20-year hiatus in St. Louis. The City of Champions Revitalization Initiative, as it’s being called, is replacing Inglewood’s dated Hollywood Park racetrack with a sports-oriented, mixed-use development expected to create an immediate financial boon for the area.

When the Pritzker Architecture Prize jury selected Alejandro Aravena of Santiago, Chile, as the 2016 laureate, it was not only for what Aravena designs, but also for what he does not design. The firm for which he serves as executive director, Santiago-based Elemental, has earned international attention for designing low-cost social housing that provides “half a house”—a home that people can inhabit, plus a framework that allows them to double the size of their dwellings as they have time and resources.