Japan is in the midst of a huge attempt to boost tourism, but there are fears that it does not offer enough nighttime fun for foreign visitors who seek out theater and other activities that often occur after sunset. A panel at the Urban Land Institute’s Japan Spring Conference, held in May at the Tokyo International Forum, discussed ways to build an “attractive night-time economy.”

Business improvement districts and other stakeholders are leveraging live music performances and other activities as a draw—both to prospective commercial tenants and to residents and visitors. Participants at a recent ULI Washington panel discussed both best practices and complicating factors when adding live-performance spaces to a neighborhood.

Richard Rogers, an internationally renowned architect recognized for people-oriented building design and development, has been named the 2015 recipient of the ULI J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development. Rogers was honored as part of the ULI Europe Conference in Paris.

Art and other expressions of culture can no longer be considered pricey or optional additions to major real estate projects, said panelists at the ULI Fall Meeting in San Francisco.

Designing more human-centered communities requires “moving beyond intentions of what we hope to create to finding ways to actually engage with people [in order] to get there,” said designer and architect Liz Ogbu, speaking at ULI’s Housing Opportunity Conference in Minneapolis last week.

Cities need look no further than Chicago’s “Bean,” Anish Kapoor’s iconic Cloud Gate sculpture in Millennium Park, to realize how investment in the arts can pay off.