Former Indianapolis Mayor William H. Hudnut III, who served as a ULI senior resident fellow and the ULI/Joseph C. Canizaro Chair for Public Policy from 1996 to 2009, passed away on December 18 after a lengthy illness. He was 84.

Joseph W. O’Connor, 70, of North Palm Beach, Florida, passed away at home in February surrounded by family and friends following a courageous ten-month battle with cancer. O’Connor founded Copley Real Estate Advisors, one of the largest and most successful real estate investment firms in the United States. He was cochair of AEW Capital Management and chairman of the Urban Land Institute from 2001 to 2003, in addition to being a ULI Foundation governor and trustee.

With 2016 under way, I am very excited and hopeful about the changes taking place at ULI this year. We are continuing to move forward in three key areas: 1) a new global governance structure;
2) a major new information technology initiative; and 3) a relocation into a new workplace in Washington, D.C.

ULI’s Building Healthy Places Initiative and the Rose Center for Public Leadership are taking a closer look at auto-oriented commercial strips and their potential to activate healthy behaviors in surrounding communities instead of inhibiting them through demonstration corridors in four geographically diverse and growing cities.

Each year, ULI’s impressive lineup of global meetings kicks off in Europe with our real estate investment and development conference, held in Paris during the winter. The 2013 event, held February 5 and 6, drew more than 500 industry leaders from 24 countries around the world—reflecting a steady increase in the geographic diversity of attendees since we started hosting the meeting 17 years ago.