The hotel industry in the United States faces complex challenges in 2025, according to Jan Freitag, national director of hospitality analytics for the CoStar Group. During the “State of the U.S. Hotel Industry” presentation at the ULI 2025 Spring Meeting in Denver, Colorado, Freitag highlighted the challenges facing the hotel business amid macroeconomic uncertainty.

Once a sprawling expanse of uncharted land, Las Vegas, Nevada, has evolved into the entertainment capital of the world, a gaming super-hub, and a premier destination for sports. This remarkable transformation didn’t happen overnight; it stemmed from decades of strategic planning, investment, and visionary zoning recommendations.

Las Vegas is unlike any other place in America. Each year it draws more than 40 million visitors to the dazzling casinos and hotels that “turn night into daytime”—and transform the city into a glittering jewel in the desert. With 164,000 hotel rooms, Las Vegas is the largest hospitality market in the U.S.—outpacing Orlando, Florida, the next biggest market, by approximately 15 percent, according to JLL.

Standing in the shadow of Regions Field and within earshot of Railroad Park, Birmingham’s Urban Supply hints at what the next chapter of downtown life could look like. Once-quiet brick warehouses are being steadily reimagined into patios, storefronts, and gathering spaces along a new pedestrian alley. Early tenants have begun to open their doors, and programming is slowly bringing people into the district. While the project is still in its early stages, the framework is in place for a vibrant hub that will grow block by block in the years ahead.

What trends are shaping the future of the industrial sector? Four experts from ULI’s Industrial and Office Park Development Council talk about the industrial submarkets and property types that offer the greatest opportunities, challenges developers face in bringing new projects to market, ways artificial intelligence and emerging technologies are reshaping the sector, tenant priorities, and other key trends.

After a quiet first half of 2024, CMBS originations increased 59 percent in Q3 on a year-over-year basis, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Quarterly Survey.

The OAK project began in 2009, when a development firm set their sights on the corner of Northwest Expressway and North Pennsylvania Avenue, the state’s most important and busiest retail intersection. As the region’s only parcel capable of supporting a vertically integrated project of this scale and density, that land represented an opportunity to create something truly special.

Following a masterplan adopted by British Land, the AustralianSuper pension fund, and the Southwark Council, developers are now seven years into a 15-year project to transform a 53-acre (21.44 hectares) parcel of industrial land and a former quay into a community that will include as many as 3,000 new homes, office, retail, leisure, and entertainment space.

As aging retail continue to evolve, one increasingly popular trend has been to redesign malls as town centers—recalling a time when such commercial districts were the heart and soul of a community. Mall–to–town center retrofits are emerging throughout the nation, especially in suburban communities, where pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use environments are highly attractive to millennials now raising families.

The scarcity of on-campus housing—especially affordable housing—means many students have little choice but to forgo the convenience, economy, and other benefits of campus life. Now, California State University, Northridge (CSUN) has become the first in the CSU system to address this disparity by adding new on-campus housing that is both affordable and can be quickly replicated across the entire system to bolster its on-campus populations.

Jeff Lubell recently joined ULI’s Terwilliger Center for Housing as a senior fellow. In this capacity, on a part-time basis, he will provide strategic direction, engage in research, and offer technical support to further the center’s commitment to ensuring that everyone has a home which meets their needs at a price they can afford. He’ll spend the balance of his time working with the Housing Innovations Group, which provides policy consulting services to state and local governments, foundations, nonprofits, and other clients.

The Opportunity Zone program, a national model to spur private investment of housing in underserved areas, has been extended by Congress beyond 2026, marking a significant opportunity for real estate professionals. This innovative initiative not only helps rebuild communities but is a win-win for residents, property developers, and investors. The program’s success in transforming economically distressed areas has proven its value, making it crucial for industry leaders to continue supporting it.

In the heart of London’s Covent Garden neighborhood, a complex of five Victorian-era structures—previously home to a seed merchant company, a brass and iron foundry, and a Nonconformist chapel, among other uses—have been restored and adapted into a single, cohesive office building with ground-floor retail and dining space. The three-year restoration preserved the property’s industrial heritage, yet it provides enough flexibility to meet the needs of today’s workforce.

A growing body of research indicates that physical space profoundly affects our brain health. The capacity of our buildings and public spaces to be regenerative in that regard remains largely untapped, however. The key resources for developing brain capital are brain skills—cognitive processes such as memory, attention, and critical thinking; and brain health—the overall functioning of an individual’s brain throughout that person’s life.

ULI San Francisco and the Civic Joy Fund have announced the winners of the Market Street Reimagined competition. This international competition of ideas, which attracted 173 submissions from nine countries, challenged entrants to create a new vision for the city’s main thoroughfare that would draw more visitors and businesses to the area. A distinguished jury, hosted by San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie, divided the $100,000 prize among the winning teams and designated eight additional entries as honorable mentions.

U.S. President Donald J. Trump signed the nearly 900-page One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law on July 4. The budget reconciliation legislation extends numerous provisions included in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that directly affect commercial real estate, including reinstatement of bonus depreciation and extension of the Qualified Opportunity Zone Program. It also incorporates provisions aimed at incentivizing affordable housing, including a significant expansion of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program. At the same time, the new law makes major cuts to wind and solar incentives.

Five experts from ULI’s Residential Neighborhood Development Council discuss the challenges and opportunities ahead for homebuilders; what buyers and renters want from their neighborhoods, and how they value sustainability and resilience; what state and local housing policies are effectively encouraging housing construction; and other trends.

Amblebrook, an innovative retirement community in the historic setting of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was specifically designed to remedy this social disease. It shatters the mold of the conventional 55-plus community.

Consumers have kept a steady foot on the gas this year. A record-high 197 million consumers shopped in stores or online over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF). The NRF forecasts that holiday sales will grow between 2.5 percent and 3.5 percent, with total retail spending in the United States falling between $979.5 billion and $989 billion during November and December. That forecast also is consistent with NRF’s annual U.S. sales growth—between 2.5 percent and 3.5 percent—for 2024.

Northern Mexico has experienced a significant expansion in the Mexican industrial real estate sector since its major decline from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, due, in part, to low-cost production in China. During the pandemic, that trend began to shift.

The National Retail Federation’s Hot 25 Retailers ranks the nation’s fastest-growing retail companies. Rankings are determined by increases in domestic sales between 2022 and 2023; all retail companies with global sales in excess of $2 billion, and key format leaders were eligible.