Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)
Texas Southern University professor and environmental justice advocate to receive ULI Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development.
In September 2022, ULI honored architect Jeanne Gang with the ULI Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development. Gang is the founding principal and partner of Studio Gang, an architecture and urban design practice based in Chicago, with offices in New York City, San Francisco, and Paris.
Asia Pacific asset owners are just beginning to grapple with decarbonization and how to factor transition and climate risks into their valuations; even so, some markets and investors are already ahead of the pack. This topic was discussed as part of a recent ULI Asia Pacific webinar, part of a series looking at decarbonization.
The first ULI Executive Convening on Embodied Carbon—held on January 17th at ULI’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., and hosted by ULI’s Decarbonization Program—launched the first of many convenings to build stronger partnerships across the industry enabling accelerated advancement on sustainability improvements and beyond.
A ULI webinar in December focused on the role of commercial real estate in fulfilling the vision of the United Nations’ Conference of the Parties 27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, with leading companies pledging to net-zero operations as soon as 2025.
Longtime ULI Trustee A. Eugene (Gene) Kohn has been elected a Life Trustee by the Institute’s Global Governing Trustees, the first architect to receive the honor.
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.
Stakeholders across the real estate value chain are increasingly recognizing that the climate crisis and biodiversity loss are deeply interlinked, and one issue cannot be solved without addressing the other. However, solutions are ready and available for real estate to implement today, according to a new report out of ULI’s Greenprint Center for Building Performance: Nature Positive and Net Zero: The Ecology of Real Estate, sponsored by Jacobs.
ULI has been establishing dialogue between real estate professionals and climate risk data analytics firms that can help advance the interests of both parties. Enhanced collaboration and understanding between these two sides should continue to improve this evolving space, potentially improving both financial and climate-risk outcomes. As part of these efforts, ULI collaborated with First Street Foundation, a research and technology nonprofit with expertise in assessing physical climate risk at the property level in the United States.
The ULI Greenprint Center for Building Performance announced today that four more of its real estate members have aligned to ULI Greenprint’s net zero carbon operations goal. These real estate leaders join the 30 members who have already adopted this goal to reduce the carbon emissions of their collective portfolio under operational control to net zero by the year 2050. The four members newly committed to net zero emissions are Bridge Industrial, Prologis (by 2030), Shorenstein Realty, and Unico Properties.
A recent ULI webinar explored how property managers must engage their tenants to achieve carbon reduction and other building-wide goals driven by environmental, social, and governance initiatives.
Technology and contributions from all stakeholders will be crucial if Asia’s cities are to meet their net zero targets. Earlier this year, a series of three webinars organized by ULI China Mainland covered the efforts and challenges of several cities and organizations around the world to give some focus to the efforts in Beijing, which is one of the cities in ULI’s Net Zero Imperative initiative. The discussions also focused on the Chinese capital as well as Hong Kong and Singapore.
Integrated System Packages (ISPs), developed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, are packaged efficiency solutions to be incorporated into the real-estate cycle. ISPs reduce transaction costs for building owners and mitigate disruptions to building occupants.
The next decade will be a critical period of change, with ongoing uncertainty amid the big evolution in technology, data, and laws. Commercial real estate market players may shift their strategies, affecting capital flows into and out of the asset class.
A new report by ULI and Heitman, a global real estate investment management firm, indicates that environmental change is prompting the migration of people and businesses, movements that may trigger significant shifts in demand for real estate. Just as investors are being forced to recognize and price the physical risks associated with climate change—wildfires, hurricanes, excessive heat—they need to integrate climate migration risk into their underwriting models.
The ULI Europe Young Leaders Group, which currently includes over 1,100 members, is launching a new initiative looking at bridging the knowledge and innovation gap between the decarbonization goals set out by our industry/governmental leaders and the tools at our disposal to meet them. Several leading members recently hosted a roundtable discussion on this issue and provided a summary of the key takeaways and next steps to tackle this important issue.
ULI has kicked off a new project in partnership with several major real estate organizations–including Allianz Real Estate, Catella, Hines, Redevco and Schroders Capital–that will support the built environment in Europe on its urgent journey to carbon neutrality.
The New York Convention Center Operating Corporation announced the completion of the Javits Center’s new rooftop event space as part of its $1.5 billion expansion project on Manhattan’s West Side. The farm and event space, along with several other sustainable upgrades, builds on the success of the convention center’s robust sustainability program.
ULI Greenprint Center for Building Performance’s annual report found a 12.4 percent reduction in carbon emissions in 2020 compared with an average 3.5 percent fall in previous years. In addition, the report found that real estate owners took advantage of reduced occupancy during the pandemic to double the implementation of energy efficiency projects.
First launched in 2017, the podcast Leading Voices in Real Estate (LVRE) recently celebrated it’s 100th episode. The podcast is hosted by Terra Search managing partner and founder Matt Slepin and has featured many of ULI’s leaders including ULI CEO Ed Walter. Slepin recently hosted a two-part discussion of the challenges facing the commercial real estate industry tackling climate change.
ULI has launched a first-of-its-kind central resource cataloging innovative parking policy reforms intended to promote more efficient use of land and creation of healthier neighborhoods.
A recent ULI webinar—with member speakers from ULI Toronto, ULI British Columbia, and ULI Alberta—addressed what leading real estate companies are doing to decarbonize their operations and development in anticipation of regulatory requirements.
The real estate industry is tackling the twin challenges of a cyclical downturn juxtaposed with the long-term consequences from the disruption caused by COVID-19, and the environmental, social, and governance agenda becoming increasingly important.
Collaborative efforts were celebrated at a Centre for Liveable Cities World Cities Summit Preview event on climate resilience in January, which explored how to accelerate cooperation between the public and private sectors.
A new publication from ULI and Singapore’s Centre for Liveable Cities calls on cities worldwide to recognize their common challenges in building climate resilience. It sets out a strategy for mobilizing individuals—whether in business, government, or civic organizations, or as residents—to act as global citizens and take steps toward making their cities more climate resilient.
The climate plan outlined by U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s administration is significant in that it reaffirms a commitment to addressing climate challenges, said panelists participating in a recent webinar hosted by the ULI Center for Sustainability and Economic Performance. The plan would also provide considerable resources to support and propel innovation throughout the real estate industry in key areas such as energy efficiency, carbon emission mitigation, and climate change resilience.
In early December, ULI members gathered virtually to discuss climate risk and real estate at the second annual Resilience Summit. The event’s agenda focused on how real estate and land use professionals can prepare for and adapt to the impacts of climate change, and where leadership could help shape better outcomes for the future.
The Initiative for Energy Justice aims to: (1) contribute to a bottom-up movement of energy justice, originating in frontline communities, by arming movement and base-building organizations in the environmental, racial, and economic justice spaces with well-supported policy research and workable transactional models for operationalizing a just transition to renewable energy; and (2) provide city and state policymakers with concrete energy policy frameworks and best practice tools that foreground equity in the transition to renewable energy, drawing on the best available data collected from frontline advocates, existing energy policies, and frameworks designed by our team.
In a new survey conducted by ULI and EY, real estate professionals said that they overwhelmingly expect increased remote working, including more working from home (96 percent), more remote working away from the home (72 percent), and more use of satellite offices at the edge of cities (67 percent).
