We are delighted to announce that Ralph Boyd, an outstanding individual who is currently the chief executive officer (CEO) of the American Red Cross’s Massachusetts region, has accepted our offer to serve as ULI’s CEO for the Americas. He brings to ULI nonprofit CEO experience and membership-based organizational experience, familiarity with a decentralized organizational structure, financial leadership, gravitas, and the ability to act both strategically and tactically.

A redevelopment plan for a Chicago site presented by a team from the University of Texas at Austin has taken top honors in the 2017 ULI Hines Student Competition, an ideas competition that provides graduate students the opportunity to devise a comprehensive design and development scheme for a large-scale site in an urban area.

Taking the necessary steps to prepare for climate change—and the extreme weather events that go along with it—can be a daunting task. A new report includes separate case studies of distinct adaptation actions from a diverse group of 17 communities across the nation from Boston to El Paso, Texas.

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.