The mayor of Paris is embracing the ville du quart d’heure—translated as 15-minute city—the first time that a leading politician in France’s largest city had backed the idea, particularly as a reelection strategy.

Despite the political uncertainty across Europe and around the world, European real estate remains a desirable asset for investors globally. That is the bottom line of the new Emerging Trends in Real Estate® Europe 2020report released by the Urban Land Institute with PwC in Brussels. The coming 2024 Olympic Games were cited as a big draw for Paris, but the Grand Paris project was also mentioned many times by panelists.

Jon Lovell, cofounder of Hillbreak, a consulting firm in the United Kingdom, discusses his recent paper L’Accord de Paris: A Potential Game-Changer for the Global Real Estate Industry, published by ULI.

Given that buildings account for 30 to 40 percent of carbon emissions, the role of real estate owners, investors, and operators in reducing greenhouse gases and atmospheric temperatures cannot be overestimated.

Following a period of successful operations and subsequent decline, the Beaugrenelle shopping center in the 15th arrondissement of Paris was demolished to make way for a new-generation venue by making the most of the existing raised slab—a significant constraint left over from the utopian style of architecture of the 1970s.

Each year, ULI’s impressive lineup of global meetings kicks off in Europe with our real estate investment and development conference, held in Paris during the winter. The 2013 event, held February 5 and 6, drew more than 500 industry leaders from 24 countries around the world—reflecting a steady increase in the geographic diversity of attendees since we started hosting the meeting 17 years ago.

New lending by European banks is likely to remain strictly conservative, limiting liquidity for the European property market.

The problem of city making today does not so much concern making new ones as it does transforming those that already exist-especially suburbs-and edge-city developments. What can the United States learn from French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his goal to remake Paris?