Immigration-based investment programs are drawing investors and high-net-worth individuals from South and Central America to countries such as Portugal, Spain, and Cyprus, experts said during a panel discussion at the ULI Latin America Conference, held in Miami during September. U.S. tax reforms are also leading potential investors to take another look at markets in Nevada and Florida, they said.

The 2019 Dodge Construction Outlook predicts that total U.S. construction starts for 2019 will be $808 billion, staying essentially even with the $807 billion estimated for 2018, according to industry data provider Dodge Data & Analytics.

The Case for Open Space, a new report from the ULI Center for Sustainability and Economic Performance, makes the business case for real estate investments in parks and open spaces. Case studies highlighted in the report were drawn from 30 open-space projects across the United States supported by the private sector, with five compelling projects that incorporate open space.

ULI’s real estate education programs tailored to students, public officials, and industry entrepreneurs are being reinforced with a gift of more than $200,000 to the ULI Foundation from ULI Trustee and former ULI Global Chief Executive Officer Patrick L. Phillips. Phillips’s contribution provides $150,000 for UrbanPlan, ULI’s popular urban development curriculum offered to high school and university students as well as public officials to raise awareness about the impact of development on the long-term future of communities, with the remainder of Phillips’s gift supporting ULI’s Real Estate Entrepreneur Program.

A new report from ULI’s Greenprint Center for Building Performance shows that the commercial real estate industry is making significant progress in reducing energy consumption, carbon emissions, water use, and waste disposal. Volume 9 of the Greenprint Performance Report™, which tracks, benchmarks, and analyzes the performance of nearly 8,000 properties globally owned by Greenprint’s members, demonstrates a 3.3 percent reduction in energy consumption, a 3.4 percent reduction in carbon emissions, and a 2.9 percent reduction in water use between 2016 and 2017.

How can a park protect a city from extreme flooding? Houston’s 160-acre (65 ha) Buffalo Bayou Park demonstrated resilience during Hurricane Harvey, surviving the storm with minimal damage and providing critical green infrastructure to the city during the peak event. In this video, learn about the park’s design and development firsthand from members of ULI’s Houston district council.

In the closing address at the 2018 ULI Fall Meeting in Boston, social psychologist and best-selling author Amy Cuddy urged audience members to alter their physical posture, speak more slowly, and use expansive breathing to feel more powerful and open to communicating with others.

Though e-commerce has not signed the death warrant for brick-and-mortar retail, the retail landscape varies vastly by sector and market—even by block in urban settings—and landlords must be more flexible than ever, said panelists speaking at the 2018 ULI Fall Meeting.

The commercial real estate sector is poised to undergo a radical technological transformation in which it will be as quick and easy to buy or sell a home as it is to order a new iPhone, in which blockchain and digital tokens will allow commercial real estate assets to be split into tiny shares that can be easily traded, and in which construction companies will deploy autonomous bulldozers to grade sites and make up for a shortage of skilled labor. Those were just some of the transformative innovations described by venture capitalist Brad Greiwe in a session on technological change at the 2018 ULI Fall Meeting in Boston.

Results from the fall ULI Real Estate Economic Forecastshow a rise in economic expansion in 2018, with growth tapering in 2019 and 2020. Tax reform is largely credited with the economic bounce that has occurred this year, with gross domestic product (GDP) growth that jumped from 2.2 percent in 2017 to an expected 3 percent this year, according to the survey conducted by the ULI Center for Capital Markets and Real Estate.