“Resilient” seems to be the best word to describe the U.S. Gulf Coast real estate industry. No matter what Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama experience— natural disasters, economic downturns, or other unforeseen problems—the region seems to bounce back stronger than ever.

It seems that everyone in the commercial real estate (CRE) industry is attempting to retool their operations to launch a fund in anticipation of the much-anticipated CRE bust and resulting flood of distressed supply supposedly just over the horizon. But it often is those individuals pitching their new fund—created to capitalize on distressed deals—who in the next sentence say “there are just no deals out there.” Should this raise a red flag?

The real estate industry has reached a pivot point, one at which land use is as much or more about the management and redevelopment of existing space as it is about new development. This emphasis on rebuilding and reusing the old and obsolete illustrates how the “use of land” cited in ULI’s mission encompasses existing buildings and what happens in them, how they are operated, and how they perform over time. Nowhere was this more apparent than at ULI’s recent forum on financing tools for energy-saving retrofits, held in New York City in early June.

Two megatrends are currently shaping what will become the new normal after the prolonged period of recovery for the U.S. economy. The first is the rapid emergence of America’s metropolitan areas as the true centers of population and economic growth. For the first time in history, more people are living in urban areas throughout the world than in rural communities.

The second is a worldwide shift in the sources and flows of global capital, creating a new world of funding sources available to be configured in new ways toward new goals. The fluidity of global streams is becoming more pronounced and vast sums of capital are seeking stable, long-term returns.

Development aligned with specific tenant demand and improving sectors—particularly the energy, education, medicine, federal government, and biotechnology sectors— presents the best opportunities for office development, office market expansion, and long-term economic growth.

Nine times out of ten, the U.S. office market lags the performance of the overall economy. In the current recession, commercial real estate continued that pattern.

In the current economic downturn, job prospects in the real estate development industry can seem scarce. However, development has always been about reinvention to meet a constantly changing market. The following ten real estate professionals illustrate a variety of career reinvention possibilities. Listed in alphabetical order, they have all changed jobs within the past five years, taking on a different role in the industry— not necessarily because of the recession, but because they saw new opportunities in a dynamic market. Some have become consultants, some have founded their own firms, some have gone to work in the public sector, and some have joined firms in a related profession. They discuss what drew them to their new jobs, how their previous work informs their current work, and how they are drawing on and broadening their expertise.

The U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen may have ended without an international commitment to specific greenhouse gas reduction targets, but the development community still needs to prepare to meet stringent targets in the next five to ten years. Both California and the U.K., among others, have already started down the path that the rest of the world is likely to soon follow.

Institutional investors will not be abandoning real estate as an asset class in 2010. Instead, they will be retrenching, rethinking, and carefully dipping their toes back into the water.

Though London’s economy has been hit hard by the global recession, the city stands firm alongside New York City and Tokyo as one of three global financial centers and remains unrivaled as the business capital of Europe.

Three-dimensional airspace subdivisions can add value to real estate developments.