As cities confront the housing crisis, they face intersecting challenges: opposition not only to affordable-housing development but often to any development; spiraling financing and construction costs; outdated zoning that stifles or misplaces growth; egregious bureaucratic barriers; and issues around displacement and historic preservation. But some cities have an asset that can serve as a testing ground for harmonizing urgent priorities: their downtown districts.

A redevelopment plan for a Seattle site presented by a team of Georgia Institute of Technology students has taken top honors in the 22nd annual ULI/Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition. The competition was created with a generous endowment from long-time ULI leader Gerald D. Hines, founder of the Hines real estate organization.

A team from ESSEC Business School in France has been named the winner in this year’s prestigious ULI Hines Student Competition – Europe. The results were announced by ULI and Hines, the global real estate investor, developer, and property manager, following the final of the fifth annual pan-European competition for integrated and multidisciplinary urban regeneration.

Experts say the real estate market in our cities is responding to the dramatic changes caused by COVID with a “flight to quality.” This headline suggests optimism that a safe harbor still exists out there as does the fear that we all need to act fast and run (for our lives) before things get bad. It reflects a winnowing to the essential characteristics that can ensure the best overall return and insulate us from the changing winds in the economy.

Neglected yet historic department store remade into a vibrant destination anchored by buzzy health food grocer.

Cambridge Crossing, a 4.5 million-square-foot (418,063.7 square meters) mixed-use space in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was one of this year’s recipients of the ULI Americas Awards for Excellence. The roughly 43-acre (17.4 hectares) project, built at the site of an abandoned railyard, has about 2.4 million square feet (223,027 square meters) of residential space, including about 2,700 residential units, and the project had multiple master plans from different developers, dating as far back as 2003.

As communities and cities across the country face mounting land use and environmental challenges, Hilco Redevelopment Partners (HRP) and Melissa Schrock, HRP’s executive vice president of mixed-use development, are working to ensure urban redevelopment is a force for positive change.

Curating and creating great spaces is at the heart of what industry players in the built environment sector do every day. Placemaking is the “art and science” of turning the ordinary into the extraordinary.

Can transit-integrated development like RUS Bus in Raleigh, North Carolina, help our cities thrive for the long haul?

Internationally acclaimed Chicago architect and Studio Gang founder, known for bringing a sustainable approach to tall buildings, to receive the prestigious ULI Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development.