Formerly at U.S. Department of Energy, Witteman discusses her mission to integrate sustainability and affordability in commercial real estate, revealing how ULI is leading the charge for decarbonized communities.

The Summer 2025 issue of Urban Land is now available for ULI members. This special issue is dedicated to Project Recovery in Los Angeles, with contributions from member leaders including Lew C. Horne and Claire De Briere. Also covered is the ULI Advisory Services team’s work on Panther Island in Fort Worth, Texas.

Recent gifts from Turner Construction Company Foundation, Huntington Foundation, Cleveland Foundation, and Walton Family fuel initiatives

In April, the Urban Land Institute welcomed Vincent Ilustre as the new president of the ULI Foundation, appointing him to lead philanthropic initiatives and strengthen donor engagement. Ilustre was drawn to the role by the strong connection members have with ULI. “There’s a genuine passion for this organization,” he said. “Members don’t just join ULI—they invest in it because it’s helped shape their professional journeys.”

UrbanPlan is a hands-on simulation used to empower participants to shape the future of their built environment by more fully understanding the complex dynamics of urban development and the market and nonmarket forces that shape it. Established 21 years ago in collaboration with the Fisher Center of Real Estate and Urban Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, UrbanPlan was piloted in the Bay Area as a curriculum for high school and university students. The program now includes a variety of formats, including workshops for public officials and community members, and hosts programs throughout the United States and Canada, Europe, Asia and the United Kingdom.

Winning proposal reimagines Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Waterfront as a model for sharing cities, where density drives innovation and inclusive urban living.

A redevelopment plan for a former industrial site in Cleveland presented by a team of Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology students has taken top honors in the 23rd annual ULI/Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition. This year’s competition asked students for proposals to create a vibrant, mixed-use, mixed-income area on a former industrial site in on Cleveland’s East Side.

A group of experts representing ULI visited Buffalo, New York, last November to make recommendations for reviving the city’s Jefferson Avenue Corridor, the main thoroughfare of a historically black area that has suffered a decline in commercial, social, and civic activity and engagement as the result of decades of disinvestment and a recent racially motivated shooting.

The Melville Charitable Trust awarded $75,000 to the ULI Foundation to support the development of 10 Principles for Addressing Homelessness: A Guide for Real Estate & Finance. Awarded in October 2024, the one-year grant is the trust’s first donation to the Urban Land Institute (ULI). It will let ULI’s Homeless to Housed (H2H) initiative create a comprehensive guide intended to connect real estate leaders with not-for-profit housing and service providers and collectively identify ways of catalyzing the production and preservation of more deeply affordable housing that is both cost-effective and rapidly deployable.

“ULI members in San Antonio understand the precariousness of their city’s housing crisis,” says Javier Paredes, principal at StudioMassivo and ULI San Antonio member leader. “They [also] recognize the power of aligning housing with transit to create greater housing stability.” In response to San Antonio’s housing crisis, ULI San Antonio members and staff applied to participate in a local technical assistance grant program from ULI’s Homeless to Housed (H2H) initiative.