The Chicago Riverwalk, which reused derelict infrastructure, is a 1.25-mile-long (2 km) civic space between Lake Michigan and the confluence of the Main Stem, North Branch, and South Branch of the Chicago River. This reinvention of urban life is at the heart of a new chapter for Chicago in which public space becomes a gathering ground for residents. Providing sweeping views and new connectivity, this civic amenity reunites the river and the city.

For more than a decade, the brick “two-flat” on the 900 block of North Drake Avenue on Chicago’s West Side had been vacant. But by the time the school year begins this fall, the West Humboldt Park home will have a new occupant. A major reason for this property’s happy ending is the involvement of a land bank that acquired the building and wiped out its back taxes and encumbrances, making it easier for someone to purchase the property and improve it.

Teams from Carnegie Mellon University, Université Laval in Quebec, the University of Maryland, and the University of Texas at Austin have been selected as the four finalists for the 15th annual ULI Hines Student Competition.

In 2025, the country’s industrial market is experiencing a rebalancing in the wake of surging demand and record new supply that marked the early pandemic years. New opportunities in fast-growing markets are emerging, and demand drivers are shifting. New space demand will grow the most, especially for small-bay industrial assets, according to a Q3 2025 report from the business advisory and accounting firm Plante Moran.

Around the turn of the 21st century, downtown Kansas City, Missouri, faced challenges familiar to many American cities: abandoned buildings and surface parking lots filled 10 core blocks despite multiple redevelopment attempts dating to the 1960s. The downtown residential population was sparse, and some 60,000 downtown office workers made haste for the suburbs at 5 o’clock each weekday.

Drawing on insights from more than 1,700 leading real estate investors, developers, lenders and advisors across the U.S. and Canada, the report identifies key opportunities, risks and market shifts that will shape the industry in the coming year.

The natural reaction to hearing that a product or material has been made with the assistance of modern slavery is to flinch in horror and perhaps disbelief. Unfortunately, the construction industry is ranked second—just behind domestic service—as a problematic industry in terms of its risk of relying on forced labor, according to the 2022 Global Estimates of Modern Slavery, Forced Labour and Forced Marriage report from the International Labour Organization in Geneva.

Los Angeles attorney George Fatheree III—who made national headlines for aiding members of the Bruce family in the return of beachfront property that was taken from their ancestors, nearly a century ago, through eminent domain—is embarking on a new venture, his own social impact fintech, ORO Impact.

Ten projects take advantage of financial tools that promote environmentally positive development

Supertall creates a “palpable energy” that speaks to New York’s resilience and the future of cities

Industry pressures abound to decarbonize existing buildings, and some geographies and asset classes make it more challenging than others. This is particularly the case for tall buildings in cold climates keen on decarbonizing their heating system as part of a larger retrofit plan. What technologies are best for the retrofit? How do owners make the projects pencil out financially? Has anyone done these projects before, or do owners face first-mover risks?

A close look at trends shaping today’s best economic and talent hubs that offers valuable clues into how to create equitable, sustainable innovation districts that prosper.

How seven U.S. cities are tackling the future of downtowns

ULI San Francisco recently hosted a panel revisiting the recommendations made by ULI Advisory Servies panelists to revive the downtown and highlighting the progress that has been made.

Berkeley, California, is emerging as a hub for life sciences and technology firms, with new developments opening in the West Berkeley neighborhood. In June, ULI San Francisco hosted a walking tour through two campuses targeting life sciences research and development tenants at the eastern edge of the San Francisco Bay: theLAB Berkeley and Berkeley Commons.

Infrastructure Ontario’s Provincial Affordable Housing Lands Program aims to create a mix of market-rate housing and permanent, sustainable, affordable housing on surplus land in greater Toronto. For its first effort, the agency chose Dream Asset Management, Kilmer Group, and Tricon Residential to develop a mixed-use community with 2,500 apartments on a former brownfield industrial site.

Across North America, cities are confronting a housing crisis that demands urgent, innovative responses. In Toronto, the launch of the Rapid Housing Initiative (RHI) in April 2020 marked a pivotal moment—an accelerated effort at the height of the pandemic to deliver safe, stable housing. Since then, unprecedented investments have been made in communities across Ontario to address housing insecurity, reshaping the province’s residential landscape.

Canada’s real estate market is in the midst of a pivotal shift as the Bank of Canada (BoC) rolls back what has been “higher for longer” interest rates. Yet despite welcome relief on financing costs, real estate leaders are still moving somewhat cautiously amid uncertainty and fluid market dynamics.

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.

Ten real estate developments have been selected as winners of the 2015 ULI Global Awards for Excellence, with five projects hailing from North America, three from Europe, and two from Asia.

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

With society and the real estate industry significantly behind on achieving the targets set in the Paris Agreement, and worsening affordability in Europe’s housing, ULI Europe’s C Change for Housing program has launched a landmark interactive systems map and companion report to help the real estate industry identify, co-create, and scale the solutions needed to decarbonize existing and future affordable housing.

Ten built environment projects from eight countries across the EMEA region have been announced as the finalists in the sixth annual ULI Europe Awards for Excellence, which recognize exemplary projects and programs in the private, public, and non-profit sectors. This year’s finalists comprise cutting edge refurbishment, restoration and new build projects, and include residential, healthcare, mixed use, education, community, laboratory, and office projects from Italy, Germany, the UK, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, France, and Spain.

Although ready to commence a new real estate cycle, real estate leaders globally are braced for another challenging year of uncertainty, with lingering inflation, largely driven by factors including geopolitical instability, and persistently higher interest rates in some regions, potentially delaying a hoped-for recovery in capital markets and occupancy metrics. This is according to the Emerging Trends in Real Estate^® Global Outlook 2025 from PwC and ULI, which provides an important gauge of global sentiment for investment and development prospects, amalgamating and updating three regional reports which canvassed thousands of real estate leaders across Europe, the United States and Asia Pacific.

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.

A massive infrastructure program is interconnecting the cities of China’s Greater Bay Area and opening up a wealth of real estate opportunities. Attendees of the ULI Asia Pacific Leadership Convivium, held in Shenzhen in March, heard two presentations on the region, which includes the cities of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Huizhou, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Jiangmen, and Zhaoqing as well as the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau.

We are late in the current cycle, and real estate investors are focusing on the potential risks as much as, if not more than, the rewards on offer, according to investors and investment managers discussing global capital markets at the 2018 ULI Asia Pacific Summit in Hong Kong.

As cities become denser, the cost of high-density parking begins to pencil out for developers—which is when the development of parking that automatically stores and retrieves cars becomes attractive.