New and Disruptive Technology
From site surveying to maintenance, drones, robo-dogs, and other smart, mobile machines are beginning to change the way the world builds.
Whereas new construction offers a blank canvas for future-proof design, the vast majority of our parking inventory consists of existing facilities. Retrofitting these structures for the future presents unique challenges, yet they are far from insurmountable. The key lies in a strategic, phased approach that shrewdly prioritizes the most impactful upgrades, thus ensuring relevance without reinvention.
Oracle’s stock recently surged 36 percent in a single day after the announcement of a new deal with OpenAI—a spike that generated an extra $244 billion in market cap for the company. The move fueled increased speculation about a potential AI bubble brewing. Such high-flying stock prices recall the dot-com bubble, when the NASDAQ stock index lost more than 70 percent of its value, dropping from a high of 5,048 in March 2000 to a low of 1,139 in October 2002.
At the 2025 ULI Asia Pacific Summit, a distinguished panel of industry leaders convened to dissect what the rise of artificial intelligence means for the sector and how organizations can harness its potential. Their debate spanned the frenetic growth of data centers, the journey of AI adoption, and seismic shifts afoot for the built environment and the workforce.
At the ULI Spring Meeting 2025 session “Mastering Innovation: Tech-Driven Transformation of Planned Communities,” two prominent community developers—Laura Cole, senior vice president at Lakewood Ranch, and Fred Balda, president of Hillwood Communities—discussed how digital tools and data are reshaping large-scale developments. Moderated by Cecilian Partners’ Philip Worland, the conversation highlighted the role of technology in revolutionizing both front-end and back-end operations in the master-planned community (MPC) sector.
As drones and electric flying vehicles mature, China imagines a new urban landscape
In Jersey City, N.J., commuters recently started using what is believed to be the first moving sidewalk designed as a permanent facility for the large-scale movement of pedestrian traffic.
October 1970: In a story titled “Computerized Cash Flow Analysis: A New Way to Evaluate Cash Project Feasibility,” the authors, John Hysom and Charles Juengling write, “In land development, cash flow has always been an important factor. In 1970, however, with both long-term and short-term financing at record interest levels, it has now become imperative that buildings and developers have as accurate a projection of cash flows, expenses, and income as possible.”
The opportunities presented by artificial intelligence (AI) today seem unlimited. During the early innings of this exciting new technology, the phrases generative AI and machine learning are often being used interchangeably. In the multifamily industry, practical applications of AI are primarily based on machine learning, a subset of AI that uses algorithms to learn automatically from big data to identify patterns and make intelligent predictions.
The current hype around artificial intelligence (AI) has many in the real estate industry dreaming about harnessing it to assist with investment decisions. But there’s a giant stumbling block: too much bad data.
The implications of climate change are becoming hard to ignore. The frequency of natural disasters has increased significantly in recent years, with the United States experiencing an average cost of $18 billion–plus from climate disasters per year. As these kinds of events have grown more common, calculating climate risk has become a hugely important task for commercial property owners. The topic was the main theme during a panel discussion at the April 2024 Resilience Summit in New York City.
ULI Greenprint has announced that its membership has grown to include more than 70 private companies, demonstrating the real estate industry’s momentum toward and commitment to decarbonization. Through measurement, benchmarking, knowledge sharing, and implementation of best practices, ULI Greenprint members strive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2030 and achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 for buildings under operational control.
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.
Real-time virtual models of objects, ranging from a building to an entire city, are an emerging concept that has the potential to transform the built environment and the real estate industry in numerous ways, according to the technology’s proponents.
In a world where consumers have grown accustomed to streaming whatever movies they want on demand and having purchases delivered to their doorsteps the next day, commercial real estate needs to focus its efforts in innovation on providing better consumer experiences, panelists said at the “Innovative Trends in Commercial Real Estate” session at the 2021 ULI Fall Meeting in Chicago.
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.
The real estate industry can simultaneously combat inequality and boost property values by improving broadband access, according to a new ULI report. Broadband and Real Estate: Understanding the Opportunity, from the Institute’s Curtis Infrastructure Initiative, makes clear that high-speed internet is no longer a luxury but a necessity for participating in society and the economy.
Kroger, one of the largest U.S. grocery store chains, has partnered with Drone Express to begin testing grocery delivery via autonomous drones in Centerville, Ohio.
According to the North American Ports Report by Cushman and Wakefield, U.S. ports rebounded strongly in the second half of 2020. Volumes for the full year changed only modestly—a 2 percent increase in loaded inbound twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) and a decline of 5.5 percent on loaded export units.
The pandemic has accelerated the use of contactless drones for comprehensive applications in real estate development.
SPONSORED POST:See the latest trends in CRE and learn how slow payments in the construction industry generated domino effects costing an estimated $100 billion in 2020. Rabbet, a provider of cloud-based software for managing construction finances, surveyed real estate developers, lenders, subcontractors, and general contractors and packaged the results in its two latest reports.
As is common in the infrastructure and regulatory world, economic analysis is increasingly being used in the real estate industry to provide quantifiable insights into the long-term outcomes of design and investment strategies related to owner, occupant, and community impacts. Companies are using evidence-based research to understand how changes in the workplace can have a direct impact on both employee well-being and bottom-line financials.
The global impact on human health and economic stability resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak is likely to quickly and dramatically elevate health and wellness as key factors influencing urban design and development as well as building management and operations, according to industry experts convened by ULI for a webinar on the impacts of the pandemic. The event was the first of a series of webinars being offered to explore how various aspects of the real estate industry are being affected by the virus and the industry’s response.
Panelists at the 2020 ULI Tampa Trends event said that smart parking and traffic sensors are already being incorporated into large projects, and Microsoft is funding the use of artificial intelligence at the University of South Florida’s medical school.
Members of ULI Europe’s Technology and Real Estate Product Council discuss the new council’s areas of focus, approaches to evaluating and implementing new technologies, ways to improve understanding between technology startups and the real estate industry, promising current and future technologies, and related trends.
Which emerging real estate technologies will become the must-haves, and which will be the near misses? You can take your chances on a $100 doorbell, but if you are investing millions in a property or trying to run a profitable business, you cannot afford to waste resources on fads. Those two questions—what are the unintended consequences, and which technologies have staying power—are themes running throughout this special issue of Urban Land.
The cover package for the 2019 Tech special issue is titled “Technology: Searching for practical solutions.” Other topics include “Smart Cities: Sidewalk’s Toronto,” “Transportation: From Scooters to Skyports,” and “Big Data: Putting Data to Work.”
No introduction required for the Empire State Building, likely the most famous office building in the world. Already an icon and a historic landmark, it is also becoming a symbol of the future, thanks to a showcase renovation that overhauled the bones of the 88-year-old structure, and ongoing efforts to implement ULI’s Tenant Energy Optimization Program (TEOP), the focus of a half-day event in that building in July.
The ULI Asia Pacific Leadership Convivium, held in Shenzhen in March, heard from a panel of real estate professionals in their 20s and 30s, explaining how the demands of the next generation of consumers and owners are changing real estate.
At ULI Arizona’s Trends Day in January, panelists talked about how revitalized public spaces—starting with parks and libraries but also including alleys, sidewalks, and roads—are helping make neighborhoods walkable and desirable.
