<b>Equitable Development</b>
The Austin Transit Partnership announced a partnership with an international design team led by HKS, UNStudio, and Gehl to create systemwide architecture and urban design for the light-rail program of Project Connect, a major expansion of Austin’s public transit system. Project Connect is a transformative, voter-approved investment that includes light rail, expanded bus routes, and more services across the city.
Despite uncertainty for 2023, participants in a ULI Pittsburgh event in January said converting 18 to 20 buildings would transform the downtown.
A member of ULI Memphis discusses the optimism for a new Ford Motor Company facility in Haywood County.
Four teams, representing Harvard University, the University of Virginia, and the University of California, Berkeley, have been selected as finalists in the 21st annual ULI Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition, an event that challenges teams of graduate students to devise a comprehensive design and development plan for a real-world urban site.
Jay Bailey, president and CEO of the Atlanta-based Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs, or RICE, is committed to championing Black entrepreneurs and creating unparalleled opportunities. Urban Land recently interviewed Bailey on the subject of how commercial real estate can be used to help close the racial wealth gap.
In mid-January, ULI New York convened three panels of top real estate experts to unpack local real estate trends for 2023.
In May 2022, the Hayti Heritage Center of Durham, North Carolina, co-sponsored a ULI Advisory Services panel with the Institute’s Foundation. The goal of the panel was to identify opportunities for intentionally inclusive development.
To be successful and sustainable, fighting homelessness in Los Angeles requires crisis intervention on two fronts: First, we must build more permanent housing and much more of it needs to be affordable. Second, we must build more transitional shelter of every type—more quickly and much, much more affordably. But shelter is not enough.
Affordable housing in California has become increasingly difficult to develop in recent years in a state where there is a significant lack of it. Two developers speak to the barriers to development in Southern California.
For grizzled veterans of commercial real estate, the return to a “negative leverage” environment may have been unforeseen but surely was not unique.
The ULI/Allen Matkins Capital Markets Roundtable, now in its eighth year, brings together investors, developers, lenders, managers, and intermediaries to share insights and perspectives on the current and future outlook for real estate capital markets. topics discussed included which sectors of the market are strong, which should be avoided; and what the thoughts and strategies of some major players in real estate financing and investing are for the coming year.
How is multifamily housing development changing in the era of remote work and escalating construction costs?
Florida’s resilience continues to be a huge and growing priority as existing buildings age and growth across the state remains steady, according to panelists at the 2022 ULI Florida Meeting in Miami. Strategic decisions and plans focused on strength and resiliency are helping mitigate real estate from wind and flooding damage, and serving as lessons to other, more mature communities planning a more resilient future.
Toronto’s deep-lake water cooling system stands as an example of the “third wave” of urban energy.
Turning obsolete office buildings into apartments can be complicated and tricky—but daring developers and ingenious architects are showing a way to help solve housing shortages.
City Ridge will include 160,000 square feet (14,800 sq m) of office space; retail and restaurant space; and 690 rental apartments, including 56 affordable units.
Developers and investors seeking capital to finance commercial real estate are facing a new reality in which capital is both more expensive and less available. Borrowers still have options, but those options depend on the credit quality and type of deal, as well as what that borrower is looking for in that loan.
Real estate economists offered a less optimistic forecast of the near-term U.S. real estate and economic environment compared with six months ago, downgrading predictions for a wide range of economic, capital market, and real estate variables. Some of the biggest changes to forecasts included 2023 gross domestic product, job growth, and private real estate returns, according to the Fall 2022 ULI Real Estate Economic Forecast.
As built environment professionals, our decisions and actions have significant impacts on the lives of others. In recognition of our responsibility to support conditions that improve the health, environmental quality, economic vitality, and social equity of communities, a subset of ULI members, under the auspices of the ULI Health Leaders Network, has generated a position statement—“Commitment to Health and Equity in the Built Environment”—to affirm health and equity as core values of our work.
Despite challenges, there is momentum in commercial real estate for capital to be raised and invested in underserved communities across the nation, according to a panel of Dallas/Fort Worth developers at the Fall Meeting in Dallas. The primary example they used to illustrate success is the National Juneteenth Museum in Fort Worth.
ULI and PwC US has released Emerging Trends in Real Estate ® 2023, an annual report highlighting the trends shaping the real estate industry. Insights from the report reconfirm two bifurcated market trends: aspects of the real estate industry are “normalizing” and reverting to pre-COVID patterns while others have permanently shifted to the “new normal” that was adopted with the pandemic.
The Urban Land Institute’s (ULI) Terwilliger Center for Housing has announced three winners for this year’s Jack Kemp Excellence in Affordable and Workforce Housing Award and four winners for the Terwilliger Center Award for Innovation in Attainable Housing.
A discussion at the ULI Fall Meeting in Dallas covered the legacy of working in a family company, as well as the challenges of leadership today, including how to lead a changing post-pandemic workforce and prepare for lean times.
For decades, highways nationwide were built to connect roads and cities but often came with the added consequence of cutting off the already disenfranchised.
New Land Enterprises is leasing up Ascent MKE, the tallest mass timber building in the world at 25 stories, in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
A new ULI report explores the social, environmental, and economic benefits of creative placemaking, along with successful case studies in the United States.
As climate change worsens and the intensity of extreme weather–related events increases, meeting modern building codes may not be enough. Municipalities, nonprofit organizations, and industry groups are developing climate resilience design standards and tools, some of which are required or incentivized for publicly funded projects, and others of which may become expected or required for commercial real estate transactions.
ULI is pleased to announce the release of the research report: Legacy Cities: From Rust to Revitalization. This report examines a cross section of small- and medium-sized cities that have used leadership, historic preservation, creative sources of funding, and other strategies to reinvent themselves.
Five ULI District Councils across the United States have been selected to participate in a new program focused on advancing action on equity in parks and open space over a 12-month period. Through the District Council Cohort for Park Equity, local teams will engage in two-day Technical Assistance Panels that consider specific questions related to park equity and access in their communities. The program is supported by The JPB Foundation.
The U.S. housing affordability crisis has both sharpened and spread significantly in the last decade: once largely confined to the coasts and the Southwest, it now extends to nearly every state. The number of metropolitan areas that underproduced housing rose from 100 to 169 between 2012 to 169 in 2019; nationally, underproduction nearly doubled in the same time period, from 1.65 to 3.79 million units.
