Recent Articles

• Retail’s Not-So-Artificial Intelligence

  February 18, 2021

  ULI MEMBER–ONLY CONTENT: Owning retail space has been challenging since the Great Recession. You likely know the reasons why: overbuilding, the internet, rapacious private equity, too many lackluster tenants. You also know that every move you make—every breath you take—is recorded by your mobile phone. This latter circumstance has allowed a clever company to develop possibly the most useful tool for commercial real estate since Hewlett Packard introduced the HP-12C financial calculator in 1981.

• Rise of Cloud Kitchens: Roughly Half of Delivered Food in Singapore Coming from Virtual Food Prep Hubs

  November 23, 2020

  Well-prepared food of practically any cuisine you can imagine, delivered to you with the help of busy drones and robots. In the not-too-distant future, this could be an everyday reality for people in cities all over the world, said a speaker at the the ULI Asia Pacific Leadership Convivium.

• Asia’s Fashion Outlets Pivot to Omnichannel, Focusing on Customer Service

  November 16, 2020

  At the 2020 ULI Asia Pacific Leadership Convivium, an international retail CEO shared her experience of engaging with customers, both offline and online, during the COVID-19 pandemic and how working with understanding landlords has helped create win/win outcomes.

• In Pursuit of Experience, Bangkok’s New Approach to Retail

  October 26, 2020

  Bangkok mastered the art of glitzy retail palaces. Now, authenticity is the favored currency.

• ULI Forecast Sees Increased Improvement in Outlook for U.S. Economy

  U.S. real estate economists predict generally improved economic and property market news for the rest of 2020, as well as for the following two years, compared with their forecasts of six months ago, according to the fall 2020 ULI Real Estate Economic Forecast.

• Creative City Policies Could Help Retail Survive COVID-19, San Francisco Experts Say

  October 13, 2020

  The COVID-19 lockdown imposed by San Francisco in late February devastated the city’s small, independent businesses, and especially its restaurant scene. But creative city policies could help nimble retailers survive, panelists said at the ULI Virtual Fall Meeting session titled “Vibrant Retail Streets in the Age of E-tail and COVID-19: Is It Time for ‘Retail First’ City Policies?”

• Christina Contreras Selected as ULI/Martin Bucksbaum Senior Visiting Fellow

  September 16, 2020

  Christina Contreras, principal and founder of Living Ecology Studio in Denver, has been selected as the ULI/Martin Bucksbaum Senior Visiting Fellow. During her one-year fellowship, Contreras will explore how privately owned and managed “third places” can better contribute to individual and community health and well-being, and will develop a “pattern book” for designers and developers to create welcoming and thriving privately owned “third places.”

• Rising to the Next Challenge in Retail’s Evolution in South Florida

  July 27, 2020

  ULI MEMBER–ONLY CONTENT: Despite the challenges facing the retail sector in 2020, South Florida’s Aventura Mall has continued to reinvent itself as a retail destination.  

• ULI Report Forecasts COVID-19 to Accelerate the Restructuring of Europe’s Retail Property Sector

  June 9, 2020

  A new update from ULI to the Reshaping Retail report, which was published earlier this year prior to the coronavirus pandemic taking hold across Europe, forecasts that the impact of COVID-19 will accelerate the restructuring of the retail property sector, particularly in the United Kingdom. The need for stable cash flows has been identified as the main overall trigger point needed to spur the investment market.