The winners of the ULI Americas Awards for Excellence become finalists for the 2024 ULI Global Awards for Excellence, competing against projects from the Europe and Asia Pacific regions. The awards are open to projects and programs in the ULI Americas region that are substantially complete, financially viable, and in stable operation. The program evaluates submissions on overall excellence, including achievements in marketplace acceptance, design, planning, technology, amenities, economic impact, management, community engagement, innovation, and sustainability, among others.

Chicago has become one of the many major cities nationwide whose downtown office market has been negatively affected by the pandemic and the associated increase in remote work. To boost development in its downtown core, the city of Chicago recently announced that it will offer $150 million in subsidies to real estate developers. The move will help develop more than 1,000 apartments in four separate adaptive-use developments.

How we use words is important. Words can describe both racial inequities and the efforts to remedy them. As the real estate industry continues the work to dismantle systemic racism, it’s critical to be intentional about language.

Many office property owners are heading for the exits amid weaker demand and looming debt maturities, while opportunistic private equity groups are leaning in to capture what could be once-in-a-generation buying opportunities.

“Higher and slower for longer” is one of the major trends highlighted in the newly released Emerging Trends in Real Estate® 2024 report.

An analysis of hundreds of cities indicates that trips to CBDs in large cities (say, ones above 1.5 million residents) have plateaued around 60 percent of their pre-pandemic levels; smaller towns (for example, ones with fewer than 150,000 residents), in contrast, have fully bounced back.

In the aftermath of January’s devastating Eaton and Palisades fires, Los Angeles faces a daunting challenge: how to rebuild not only homes but also the infrastructure that underpins entire communities—from water and electrical distribution systems to damaged sewers and streets to community essentials such as trees, parks, and libraries. The scale of the infrastructure challenge is immense.

Experts explore new underwriting models and tax increment financing districts to fund the rebuilding of homes and infrastructure

Experts encourage the creation of community rebuilding authorities and
other measures to ensure the best-case scenario for recovery after January’s wildfires

Consumers have kept a steady foot on the gas this year. A record-high 197 million consumers shopped in stores or online over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF). The NRF forecasts that holiday sales will grow between 2.5 percent and 3.5 percent, with total retail spending in the United States falling between $979.5 billion and $989 billion during November and December. That forecast also is consistent with NRF’s annual U.S. sales growth—between 2.5 percent and 3.5 percent—for 2024.

The U.S. economy did very well in 2024, said Barbara Denham, lead economist for Oxford Economics, and the forecast for the coming year is more of the same—both in New York City and across North America. However, in presenting Oxford’s favorable economic forecast for 2025 at a ULI New York event last month, Denham also noted many caveats ahead of the incoming U.S. administration.

The ULI Terwilliger Center for Housing has announced two winners for this year’s Jack Kemp Excellence in Affordable and Workforce Housing Award, as well as two winners for the Terwilliger Center Award for Innovation in Attainable Housing.

By repurposing an underutilized hotel as student housing, San José State University ignites campus life and fuels a downtown resurgence

Launched in 2022 with the release of its foundational report, Homeless to Housed: The ULI Perspective, ULI’s Homeless to Housed (H2H) initiative aims to address the U.S. housing and homelessness crises through real estate–driven solutions that emphasize a new degree of affordability and necessary connections to supportive services. The early work reflected in the report brought to light the real estate development community’s ability to deploy expertise and resources in addressing homelessness in the communities where ULI members live and work.

Roughly 10,000 people live on the streets or in temporary shelters in San José, California. This estimate, based on 2023 point-in-time calculations, sparked ULI members in the San Francisco Bay area to leverage ULI’s Homeless to Housed (H2H) grant initiative to help uncover potential housing solutions for their bayside neighbor.

At the recent 2023 ULI Spring Meeting in Toronto, panelists noted that transaction volumes have dropped significantly with the slowing of lending and bank failures.

In the heart of Toronto, a revolution is unfolding underground. Beneath the bustling streets and towering skyscrapers, a network of pipes is tackling the climate crisis. The story of Toronto’s Deep Lake Water Cooling system and its potential to reshape the approach to sustainable development was told during a session at the ULI Spring Meeting in Toronto.

At a 2023 ULI Spring Meeting panel titled “View from the Top,” Tsering Yangki, executive vice president at Dream Unlimited, one of Canada’s leading real estate companies, with over $23 billion in assets across North America and Europe, spoke with WLI chair Ellen Klasson, managing director at RCLCO.

As buildings become more efficient and run on “cleaner” energy sources, the industry’s attention will need to include embodied carbon—emissions associated with the manufacturing and transportation of building materials, as well as the construction, maintenance and disposal of buildings.

ULI Europe has announced the establishment of three new Product Councils, focusing on Operational Real Estate, Placemaking and the global real estate markets through the European Global Exchange Council (GEC).

The outlook for the European real estate market is cautiously optimistic despite growing geopolitical uncertainty and concerns about economic growth, with London, Madrid, and Paris emerging as the standout performers, according to a new report by PwC and the Institute.

Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, known for reinventing Paris as a 15-minute city, to receive the prestigious ULI Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development.

According to the latest Emerging Trends in Real Estate® Europe report from PwC and ULI, 75 percent of real estate leaders agree current valuations “do not accurately reflect” all the challenges and opportunities in real estate, as a wedge continues to be driven between market price expectations and book valuations.

Although residential fell more in the first quarter of 2023, office remains Europe’s most scarred commercial real estate sector, according to advisory firm Green Street. Government mandates around sustainability are also tightening, and Cushman & Wakefield says 76 percent of European office space could be obsolete by 2030 unless landlords start investing now.

Against the iconic backdrop of Hong Kong’s skyline, a room filled with cross-disciplinary real estate experts engaged in a lively display of unprecedented collaboration. Brightly colored sticky notes plastered across the floor-to-ceiling windows mapped out an intricate web of relationships between developers, tech providers, facility managers, investors, utilities, and more. The pioneering systems change workshop was piloted by ULI APAC Greenprint and aimed to address a critical challenge: how to accelerate climate tech implementations that will lead to long-term sustainability.

Renowned U.S. architect opens up about his extraordinary career in China and the U.S.

The final day of the 2024 ULI Asia Pacific summit in Tokyo featured a capital markets panel with leaders from both European and North American funds, who shared their insights into the region’s real estate markets—and how those markets stack up against their global counterparts.

Conducted in October, the Emerging Trends in Real Estate® survey ranked Tokyo (1), Osaka (2), Sydney (3), and Singapore (4) as the four cities with the best investment prospects for the region. However, MSCI data and anecdotal reports reveal that market disparities are profoundly evident across both geographies and sectors in Asia Pacific.

During his keynote address at the 2024 ULI Singapore Annual Conference, more than 300 participants gathered at the Parkroyal Collection Marina Bay to hear Olivier Lim, chairman of StarHub and the Singapore Tourism Board—based upon his 35 years of experience in real estate, banking, and leadership—how land and real estate shaped Singapore’s path as a nation.

Twelve developments from across Asia have been selected as winners of the 2024 ULI Asia Pacific Awards for Excellence, one of the real estate industry’s most prestigious honors. Announced at the 2024 ULI Asia Pacific Summit held in May in Tokyo, this year’s award winners include projects in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and the Philippines. These winners will automatically qualify as nominees for the 2024 ULI Global Awards for Excellence, where they will compete against projects from North America and Europe.