Although trends in office design favor open, collaborative work spaces—with communal tables and devoid of cubicles, private offices, and many hallmarks of traditional workplace culture—for some businesses it still makes sense to take a more traditional approach to workplace design.

On any given morning, will your workplace be unreachable because a power failure rendered the doorway security system inoperable?

Members of the Young Leaders Group of ULI Orange County/Inland Empire put their skills to work helping those who help the disabled. They offered advice to Guide Dogs of the Desert, a Riverside County, California, nonprofit that pairs service dogs with people who are blind, with a plan for expanding its live-in training campus.

Federal agencies are under continuing pressure to reduce their demand for leased and build-to-suit space. They intend to reduce square footage used per employee, increase teleworking—and make better use of existing government buildings, administrators told a ULI WashingtonTrends conference audience.

How did Charlotte, North Carolina, developer Bissell Companies build a major mixed-use development —largely on spec—despite dramatic changes in economic conditions? Their Ballantyne community includes more than 5 million square feet (465,000 sq m) of office space, 500,000 square feet (46,500 sq m) of retail, 1,000 hotel rooms, and 4,600 residential units. And the developers believe that it pays to have inventory at the ready.

Envision Charlotte, a pioneering sustainability program in Charlotte, North Carolina, has partnered with Duke Energy, Cisco Systems Inc., and Verizon to produce a model program, Smart Energy Now. The program involves a robust network of 70 buildings, and their owners and managers, who will help achieve the program’s goals for dramatic energy savings. Up next: water, waste, and air. Charlotte will host ULI’s Spring Meeting, May 8-10.

The government’s data center consolidation efforts, cloud computing initiative, and budget constraints are creating opportunities for private data centers, attendees at one Bisnow Media event learned.

With a few tweaks to the development plan, Kai Tak—a decommissioned airport—can become the vibrant, mixed-use community the Hong Kong government wants it to be, says a ULI advisory services panel.

Once the butt of jokes by late-night comedians, Newark now has building cranes dotting its skyline—proof that the Garden State’s largest city is experiencing something of a renaissance.

In its transition from an industrial economy to a knowledge-based one, Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has become the most robust innovation-based cluster in the nation—if not the world.