Fall meeting attendees toured on foot this dynamic and exciting community in Chicago that is evolving differently than any other Chinatown in America. A neighborhood rich with historic and award-winning contemporary architecture, this proud community is fighting gentrification while retaining its cultural significance.

Eight new hotels are now under construction in Chicago’s central business district, totaling about 1,500 new rooms, according to the latest list from STR Group. Developers are also planning to start construction on more than a dozen other new hotel projects, totaling an additional 3,700 new rooms.

Ten bridges for walkers and bicyclists creatively span waterways, roads, and railway tracks.

By using 3-D printers to build lightweight but strong plastic frameworks for conventional building materials such as concrete, builders may soon be able to create complex structures with unorthodox shapes and contours that would be difficult or even impossible with today’s construction methods, said a speaker at the ULI Fall Meeting in Dallas. And better yet, they will be able to fashion intricate, customized interiors and exteriors at no additional cost.

A new ULI program that helps office tenants design and manage their spaces to reduce energy consumption could help the real estate industry reduce emissions that are driving climate change. But at the program’s rollout at ULI’s 2016 Fall Meeting in Dallas, panelists said that the new ULI Tenant Energy Optimization Program is likely to have a more far-reaching impact than that of many previous environmental initiatives because it offers a compelling, well-documented business case that energy efficiency can generate a lucrative return on investment.

Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport is the most successful American template for how a major airport can become a core for real estate development and economic growth. Now, planning is taking it to a higher altitude.

On January 7, 2025, when sparks began igniting the communities of Pacific Palisades, Malibu, Pasadena, Altadena, Hollywood, and others, the city of Los Angeles had been struggling to produce 486,379 new housing units by 2029, a number mandated by California’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) to address the shortfall.

Multifamily experts gathered at the University of Southern California to highlight where denser construction is creating affordability.

On September 30, 2024, green banks, community development financial institutions (CDFIs), nonprofits, tribal organizations, state and local governments, and coalitions nationwide received funding from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), a historic $27 billion investment by the United States federal government to mobilize private capital to combat the climate crisis. As the GGRF is activated, Americans have an array of policies, standards, tools, and data, plus more than a decade of experience, as well as much greater political support for action on climate and social equity issues.

This year’s Net Zero Buildings Week is Sept. 16-20. The virtual event series supports partnerships and collaboration across the built environment industry to collectively advance net zero buildings.

Hundreds of events are scheduled September 22-27 for Climate Week NYC 2024, an annual event that drives climate action by those at the very top of business and politics, but also by communities, artists, and activists. This year’s theme: It’s Time. The built environment is a part of the dialogue, as are cross-sector issues like circular economy, water, finance, biodiversity, adaptation, health, environmental justice, policy, and more. With more than 600 events to choose from, it’s easy to assemble a perfect, customized itinerary for the week.

On August 14, ULI New York and the Holcim Foundation hosted a sold-out event on “Decarbonization at Scale,” a topic that has never been more critical for the future of the built environment in North America.

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.

In the Waterfront Toronto RFP for Quayside, Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs saw a key opportunity for a demonstration project unbound by the conventions of traditional urban planning or real estate economics. This was something new: a chance to innovate at the urban scale, to develop, deploy, and measure the success of a web of new technologies in an actual neighborhood.

A graduate student team from Cornell University, two teams from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a team from the University of Maryland have been selected as the four finalists for the 16th annual ULI Hines Student Competition, an ideas competition that provides students the opportunity to devise a comprehensive design and development scheme for a large-scale site in an urban area.

In 2003, Waterfront Toronto, a tri-government agency, undertook the transformation of 79 acres (32 ha) of provincially owned brownfields in Toronto’s downtown east end. The West Don Lands project was designed through extensive community engagement and collaboration between government and the private sector. The result was an award-winning precinct plan for a pedestrian-focused community—built around parks, with housing for people of all ages, income levels, and abilities; well served by transit, retail, and community amenities; and developed in accordance with stringent sustainability requirements.

Regulatory environment among the barriers to more adoption of modular construction techniques in Europe.

10 structures showcase the lightweight, carbon-sequestering power of mass timber.

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.

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?

Two of Asia’s leading entrepreneurs gave real estate investors a glimpse into the worlds of Web 3.0 and deep tech at the ULI Asia Pacific Summit.

Technology and contributions from all stakeholders will be crucial if Asia’s cities are to meet their net zero targets. Earlier this year, a series of three webinars organized by ULI China Mainland covered the efforts and challenges of several cities and organizations around the world to give some focus to the efforts in Beijing, which is one of the cities in ULI’s Net Zero Imperative initiative. The discussions also focused on the Chinese capital as well as Hong Kong and Singapore.

Ensuring inclusion and access to all, embodying Hong Kong’s societal values and global identity, safeguarding Hong Kong’s heritage for future generations, and committing to sustainability are among some of the ideas suggested in a new ULI report on how a Hong Kong harbor development can best serve the local community.

The cover package for the 2019 Asia Pacific special issue is titled “Finding Balance: The quest for smart buildings, smart tourism, and smart climate strategies.” Other topics include “South Korea: Heritage at Jeonju Hanok Village,” “ China: Intercontinental Shanghai Wonderland Hotel,” “Thailand: Dealing with Bangkok’s Climate Challenge,"and “Interview: Chairman Nicholas Brooke.” This special issue will be available at the ULI Asia Pacific conference in Shanghai and mailed to ULI members in Asia.

Set against an urban landscape of concrete, steel, and glass in Tanjong Pagar, Singapore’s central business district, Oasia Hotel Downtown (OHD) stands out with its red silhouette clad in lush greenery. An integrated hotel/office development comprising a 27-story, 314-room business hotel and 100 new-age offices, OHD responds to the government’s vision for the precinct earmarked as the island’s next waterfront city with a mix of business, commercial, and residential activities.

Dr. Cheong Koon Hean, chief executive of Singapore’s Housing & Development Board (HDB), was presented with the J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development at a January 18 ceremony at the Fullerton Hotel in Singapore.