Universities are joining real estate with related business and design curriculums—and boosting their hands-on experiences for students.

How best to adapt to a fast-changing, tech-enabled world? Government and private-sector leaders point to sustainability, education—and keeping an eye on what people are eagerly sharing rather than buying.

With over 50,000 senior housing developments across the country, the opportunities for energy reduction and financial savings achievable through retrofitting increasingly warrant serious consideration. Occupants should be involved from the start.

Spreads reported by Trepp LLC remain “range-bound” at an average spread of 207 basis points over 10-year Treasuries. The Cushman & Wakefield Sonnenblick-Goldman Survey shows rates coming in slightly with lenders seemingly ready to lend at attractive spreads if the right deal comes their way.

Walking and bicycling provide many benefits—reduced air pollution, improved public health, decreased dependence on foreign oil—but federal funding for nonmotorized transportation is now in jeopardy.

In a recent dialogue amongst officials of Hamburg, Germany and of the U.S. cities of Baltimore, Boston, Washington, D.C., panelists provided their thoughts on the City of Hamburg’s successful urban sustainability initiative and what barriers stood between replicating similar efforts in their respective cities.

According to Emerging Trends, the real estate report from PWC and ULI presented at a ULI 2011 Fall Meeting press conference in L.A. last week, a handful of urban centers are climbing out of recession and may serve as models for the rest of the country. Washington, D.C., remained the number-one city for the third consecutive year; read more to see how the other cities fared in this year’s survey.

In the 33rd edition of Emerging Trends, one of the most highly regarded industry outlook reports published, the opinions of 950 investors, developers, lenders, consultants, and property company representatives point to a rather glum outlook for 2012: the climb out of the real estate depression will be a long and slow one for all but one market sector. Read more to learn why and to learn how cities have improved over a year ago.

All across America, surface parking lots dot metropolitan landscapes, serving the same solitary purpose day after day. But in some parts of the country, these underused parcels of real estate are becoming the new frontier in solar power. So far in 2011, thousands of solar panels have been constructed over parking lots in California, Maryland, Ohio, and New Jersey, among other places.

Nashville, the capital of Tennessee, now has one of the nation’s most successful home retrofitting campaigns—Go Green Nashville. It started two years ago as a small pilot initiative by the ULI Nashville Sustainability Committee, targeting an urban neighborhood within the city, and has now taken off. Read more to discover what has made this community-based initiative so successful and what lessons can be applied in your area.