The city of Detroit used an online platform to get more community feedback on the city’s first Sustainability Action Agenda. In addition to traditional community outreach, community members were solicited with a multilingual campaign using text messages, a web platform, and traditional yard signs, helping the city gather input from thousands of respondents, more than would be possible at a traditional community meeting.

At the 2019 ULI Florida Summit, futurist Greg Lindsay, a futurist and senior fellow with the NewCities nonprofit organization, detailed change agents of future development including the electric scooter mania, shops without checkouts, and “urban cabins.” Lindsay described broadly how the disruption of retail, office, residential, and transportation will continue around the globe—and, in some cases, increase.

How are tourism trends shaking up the real estate industry?

Three game-changing projects in central Florida were highlighted during the 2019 ULI Florida Summit, with each taking a long view of remaking historic spots while gauging next-generation needs, including education needs in the region and the shifting needs of retail and industrial uses.

An ambitious project in Hangzhou—the city where Alibaba is headquartered—is using big data, sensors, and artificial intelligence (AI) to reduce congestion. The system is now being implemented in six other cities in Asia.

How can developers create vibrant places that bring people together to live, work, play, and hang out? Members of ULI’s new Placemaking Council discuss the value of bringing the notion of placemaking to development, the strategies for setting up placemaking projects that will thrive, the obstacles that can get in the way of success, common misperceptions about placemaking, and related trends.

Speaking at the ULI Spring Meeting in Nashville, bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham said that as far back in America’s history as the Revolutionary War, Americans have been able to change their minds and switch sides on many issues. “America was founded on the idea that we could think our way through problems,” he said.

The civil rights struggle of 50 years ago—Nashville was the first southern city to desegregate public services, setting an example for activists throughout the South—continues today, but now it is more focused on economic equality. That was the main takeaway from a ULI Spring Meeting session during which panelists discussed how much the civil rights struggle has achieved and how much further it has to go.

A new generation of software platforms could do everything from monitoring buildings’ energy and water use in real time to providing tenant workforces with on-site access to medical treatment services, said panelists at ULI’s Spring Meeting.

Nashville is evolving from “a nice small city to an emerging, medium-sized city,” said speakers at the 2019 ULI Spring Meeting, in part because of the city’s willingness to invest in its downtown through public-private partnerships.