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.

An area in Cincinnati comprising portions of a highway, the central business district, and the central riverfront along the Ohio River has been selected as the study site for the annual ULI Hines Student Competition. Though based on a hypothetical situation, the ideas competition provides both full- and part-time graduate-level students the opportunity to devise a comprehensive design and development program for an actual large-scale urban site.

ULI Global Chief Executive Officer W. Edward Walter provided highlights of the Institute’s Global Strategic Plan, which will help strengthen member engagement and impact, during remarks at the 2018 Fall Meeting’s closing general session.

While the scenario is fictitious, cities all over the world deal with these sorts of problems on a daily basis. Such scenarios form the basis of UrbanPlan, a high-priority ULI initiative that seeks to broaden the discourse and encourage creative thinking among high school and university students and public officials in tackling some of the most intransigent problems facing urban planners. The fundamentals of UrbanPlan, one of the programs ULI offers members as a volunteer opportunity, were presented to members during a Fall Meeting session.

In April, ULI Advisory Services presented recommended redevelopment possibilities for the 24-acre (9.7 ha) site of Bloomington Hospital—a campus in Bloomington, Indiana, that will move its operations in 2020.

Longtime ULI leader Nina J. Gruen, who pioneered the use of behavioral research to predict market demand for commercial and residential real estate, passed away on September 15, 2017. She was 83. Gruen and her husband, Claude Gruen, joined ULI in 1971, not long after founding Gruen Gruen + Associates, a renowned San Francisco–based firm that continues to provide research-based consulting and implementation services to the real estate industry and public land use and planning policy makers. Gruen, who remained active in ULI throughout her career, was elected as the Institute’s first female trustee in 1982, and was named an honorary member in 1996.

If you have ever flown through Kansas City International Airport, you likely have noticed the three stand-alone horseshoe terminals—only two of which are active. Or the lack of food and beverage choices, restrooms, and other amenities near the gates compared with what is available at similar, modern airports.

Developers of master-planned communities (MPCs) must prepare for the next generation of buyers who will be more sophisticated and more discerning because they will come from urban environments, attendees were told at the 2017 ULI Spring Meeting.

Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design recently released a report examining how urban planning and design interventions can help improve housing and urban development practice in Mexico, including densifying existing population centers with infill development and retrofitting infrastructure and services in areas where existing homes have been abandoned.

For midsized U.S. cities to compete successfully in the 21st-century global marketplace, it is crucial for governments to think beyond the tired strategy of luring away employers from other locales. Instead, city officials need to focus on land use and placemaking as ways to attract talent, generate new business opportunities, and consolidate economic and community development to enhance their brands, according to speakers at ULI’s 2016 Fall Meeting in Dallas.