Currently, vacancy rates in the Washington, D.C. area are around 20 percent, in line with the national average. The nationwide housing shortage, meanwhile, has hit a record high of 4.7 million homes, despite a five-year uptrend in new construction. The deficit is particularly pronounced in highly desirable urban and inner-suburban locations such as Alexandria, Virginia.

As aging retail continue to evolve, one increasingly popular trend has been to redesign malls as town centers—recalling a time when such commercial districts were the heart and soul of a community. Mall–to–town center retrofits are emerging throughout the nation, especially in suburban communities, where pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use environments are highly attractive to millennials now raising families.

Across North America, cities are confronting a housing crisis that demands urgent, innovative responses. In Toronto, the launch of the Rapid Housing Initiative (RHI) in April 2020 marked a pivotal moment—an accelerated effort at the height of the pandemic to deliver safe, stable housing. Since then, unprecedented investments have been made in communities across Ontario to address housing insecurity, reshaping the province’s residential landscape.

Although video conferencing and other technological innovation has made it possible for economic activities to be dispersed, differences in growth rates, jobs, and incomes have increased, in recent decades, as regions in the Northwest and Midwest have lost population and regions in the South and West have experienced population, employment, and income growth. The negative effects of housing price increases in growing regions serve as a constraint to domestic migration and economic opportunities, especially for lower-skilled workers. In the long run, unaffordable housing prices contribute to unequal regional development and worsening income disparities. Job-rich regions need to encourage housing production.

What trends are shaping the future of the industrial sector? Four experts from ULI’s Industrial and Office Park Development Council talk about the industrial submarkets and property types that offer the greatest opportunities, challenges developers face in bringing new projects to market, ways artificial intelligence and emerging technologies are reshaping the sector, tenant priorities, and other key trends.

Esteemed developer Tom Cousins, who was born and raised in Georgia, passed away late last month at age 93. Over the course of his extraordinary life, he became not only one of the most influential real estate and urban development visionaries of our time but also a philanthropist who vowed to create lasting change—and fulfilled that promise.

As sage smoke wafted up, the knowledge holder gently waved an eagle feather from side to side, enveloping the booklet. And with that, the ground-breaking Guide to Truth and Reconciliation in Land Development was cleansed, blessed, and released to the world.

ULI San Francisco and the Civic Joy Fund have announced the winners of the Market Street Reimagined competition. This international competition of ideas, which attracted 173 submissions from nine countries, challenged entrants to create a new vision for the city’s main thoroughfare that would draw more visitors and businesses to the area. A distinguished jury, hosted by San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie, divided the $100,000 prize among the winning teams and designated eight additional entries as honorable mentions.

A team of ULI experts visited Fort Worth in September 2024 to develop anti-displacement strategies for the city’s historic, majority Hispanic Northside neighborhood, which faces mounting pressure from two nearby megadevelopments, as well as broader metropolitan growth trends that drove up the area’s property values 60 percent from 2016 to 2021.

ULI Asia Pacific has released its 2025 Asia Pacific Home Attainability Index, revealing persistent challenges to affordable or accessible housing across the region. The fourth edition of the report assesses 51 market segments across 41 major cities.