With arts, office, and recreational offerings, Philadelphia’s Center City is drawing new residents—of various ages—to downtown living.

Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant told one story about this great city. But, to most Americans, whether they have set foot on Philadelphia soil or came to know it only through their history lessons, few cities are as familiar.

Over the past year, we’ve spent quite a bit of time examining the intersection of technology and real estate; the topic has dominated real estate sessions at ULI meetings, inspired Institute publications and articles, and come up in informal member-to-member exchanges.

Joseph P. Riley Jr., who led the highly successful revitalization of Charleston, South Carolina, during his 40-year tenure as mayor, has agreed to serve as ULI’s first distinguished visiting fellow. As a distinguished visiting fellow, Riley will offer expertise for several of ULI’s areas of focus, including affordable and workforce housing, sustainable development, improving overall community livability, and public sector leadership in land use decision making.

Discover how our members have advanced ULI’s mission and enhanced communities around the world.

Premiering this week, Light City Baltimore is the first large-scale, international “light festival” in the United States. Similar festivals have been held in Berlin, Singapore, Rio de Janeiro, and Sydney, Australia. Light City Baltimore provides a backdrop for the celebration of ideas, ingenuity and creativity through art, music and innovation.

A company called Radiator Labs has a solution to cut the cost of heating an old radiator building in places like New York City by a third. The technology also gives residents the power to control the heat in their own apartments—without replacing the central boiler that supplies the heat. This was one of five technology companies at a real estate-focused Demo Day held in January by MetaProp NYC, which calls itself the “New York Real Estate Technology Accelerator.”

A national developer is transforming a former retail strip center in the Washington, D.C., suburbs into a dense, urban, mixed-use neighborhood.

A renewed focus on food is providing a bounty of innovations in real estate, attendees of the ULI Food and Real Estate Forum learned while sharing development experiences, with discussions including enhancing health, food security, and social equity.

According to a report by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, the United States has seen an unprecedented increase in those living in rental housing, with nearly 9 million rental households added since 2005. While private lending has increased in the sector, new construction is largely focused on the higher end of the market.