After developer Bruce Etkin, a past ULI Trustee and a current member of the ULI Foundation board, sold all of his company’s properties in 2021, he channeled his energy and attention to different challenges—one of them homelessness.

A new global report from ULI and LaSalle Investment Management (LaSalle), a leading real estate investment management firm, offers a new framework to help the real estate industry act on climate risk disclosure data. Across the real estate industry, practitioners understand physical climate risk to assets and portfolios poses a financial risk, but there are still many challenges to acting on the data being collected and disclosed.

How we use words is important. Words can describe both racial inequities and the efforts to remedy them. As the real estate industry continues the work to dismantle systemic racism, it’s critical to be intentional about language.

Since the publication of Building Small: A Toolkit for Real Estate Entrepreneurs, Civic Leaders, and Great Communities in 2021, author and developer Jim Heid has continued to grow the building Small movement. Last year, he launched a free-yet-private online platform that serves as an interactive network where like minds solve the big problems of building Small.

Since the retirement of Urban Land Institute’s Global CEO Ron Pressman in October 2023, the search for a visionary global leader has taken center stage. As the Institute charts its course in shaping the built environment for transformative impact within communities worldwide, finding the right leader is paramount.

Holcim Foundation is equipping the next generation of building practitioners to become impactful voices of change.

Whether they are increasing representation of women in the real estate industry, educating students and public officials about development, or helping local communities find solutions to their infrastructure needs, the programs that donors support by contributing to the ULI Foundation have a powerful impact.

For some members of the ULI Foundation’s Governors Society, philanthropic giving is a way to support the Institute’s efforts to remedy the worldwide shortage of attainable housing, reduce carbon output to fight climate change, and educate a diverse future generation of leaders for the real estate profession. For other governors, their philanthropy is a gesture of gratitude for the role that ULI has played in their professional careers and achievements, or a way to honor friends they made through the organization. And some just want to be an inspiration to other ULI members.

ULI’s Art in Place program has expanded with the addition of ULI France and ULI Germany, bringing the total number of participating district and national councils to eight. The program aims to connect artists, developers, and community voices to promote creative placemaking, which integrates art, culture, and creativity as levers of community revitalization.

Urban Landmagazine sat down with Collete English Dixon, executive director of the Marshall Bennett Institute of Real Estate, and administrative chair, real estate, at the Heller College of Business at Roosevelt University in Chicago for a wide-ranging conversation on diversity and inclusion, how far the industry has come, and what the future paths to success could look like in a diverse industry.