Infrastructure
As federal and state leaders renegotiate the Colorado River’s operating rules amid long-term water shortages, the outcomes could reshape development patterns, water policy, and real estate investment across the American West.
Bridge the gap between vision and action with key insights on funding and policy for resilient stormwater infrastructure.
The construction phase is where the vision of a future-proof parking facility truly takes shape, where theoretical plans transform into a tangible, tech-ready structure. This step isn’t merely about pouring concrete and raising steel; it’s a critical juncture for embedding the smart capabilities that will define the modern parking experience and ensure its long-term relevance in an evolving mobility landscape.
The Association for Real Property and Infrastructure (ARPI) has awarded a generous grant of $109,000 to the ULI Foundation to enhance cross-regional knowledge exchange and research related to infrastructure strategies, with a particular focus on collaboration between U.S. and British members. The ULI Randall Lewis Center for Sustainability in Real Estate will administer the grant.
At the Urban Land Institute’s 2025 Spring Meeting in Denver, real estate leaders gathered to share critical lessons learned from the catastrophic wildfires that ravaged Los Angeles in January. The panel, “Rebuilding Resilience: A Conversation with Leaders on Lessons from the Los Angeles Wildfires,” emphasized the importance of swift disaster response and collaborative approaches, as members unveiled the influential Project Recovery: Rebuilding Los Angeles After the January 2025 Wildfires report, which they hope will serve as a blueprint for other cities facing disasters.
“Investors are increasingly looking at airports as lucrative opportunities,” said Steve Forrer, chief investment officer at Aviation Facilities Management Company. “When you position an airport development correctly, it can draw in a wide range of businesses, from tech startups to established global firms,” he said.
Covid-19 may have caused a precipitous decline in convention crowds in 2020, but it did not halt long-range plans to overhaul and expand convention centers in a number of key U.S. cities. Today that foresight is bearing fruit with grand new facilities able to host larger industry and trade gatherings than ever before.
Twenty years ago, India had only 50 airports with regularly scheduled service, according to statistics from the Airports Authority of India. By 2014, the number had grown to 74. By 2023, the number had doubled, to 148. Sometime in the 2030s, it is expected to double again. Even more extraordinary than the number of airports, however, is their architecture.
Las Vegas is betting on significant investment in public transportation to help generate thousands of new real estate developments along major city streets such as Maryland Parkway, one of the city’s most important corridors outside of the Las Vegas Strip.
Federal funding opportunities through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) are supporting essential investments in green and resilient infrastructure, with the potential to create more livable communities while also supporting successful real estate developments through enhanced aesthetics, improved building user experiences, and operational efficiencies.
The Dasha River Ecological Corridor focuses on the ecological restoration project in the Nanshan district of Shenzhen, China. The project, led by China Resources Land and master planned by AECOM, aims to restore the watercourse that connects the coastal Nanshan district to the northern mountainous area of the city.
What ULI members need to know about the United States’ largest infrastructure investment in a generation.
Can transit-integrated development like RUS Bus in Raleigh, North Carolina, help our cities thrive for the long haul?
Coordinated Commuter Rail Would Support Equitable Regional Growth in Washington, D.C., Panelists Say
A coordinated regional commuter rail system envisioned for the national capital region could unlock opportunities and increase equity for residents and neighborhoods, panelists asserted during a session Thursday at the 2022 ULI Spring Meeting in San Diego.
Michael Spotts, a senior visiting research fellow at ULI’s Terwiliger Center for Housing and head of Neighborhood Fundamentals, recently appeared on the Talking Headways podcast. Spotts chats with us about takeaways from the Shaw Symposium on Urban Community Issues, the definition of infrastructure, and the importance of taking a systems approach to important interconnected topics like transportation, education, and health care.
Real estate developers and policymakers can promote equity, environmental resilience, and economic mobility by investing in forward-looking infrastructure, according to a new report from ULI. The report, Prioritizing Effective Infrastructure-Led Development, from the ULI Curtis Infrastructure Initiative, provides a comprehensive framework as the United States prepares to make its largest infrastructure investment in a generation.
A recent ULI webinar provided an overview of U.S. infrastructure spending and the details of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. Then the panelists discussed projects in Austin, Texas, and Washington, D.C., that demonstrate how infrastructure investment supports equitable and desirable development.
A survey conducted this spring by the ULI Curtis Infrastructure Initiative found that while the Institute’s members disagree about what exactly constitutes infrastructure, there is broad agreement that infrastructure creates the framework to enable real estate development, ensure economic development and housing opportunities, and provide connections for diverse communities. Asked to cite their top priority for infrastructure investment, members most often cited the stock of affordable housing.
Beginning in the 1950s, the Interstate Highway System began to span the continent, connecting cities across the United States and driving suburban development. But in many cities, these highway projects also physically divided communities and paved over neighborhoods. A ULI webinar hosted by the Curtis Infrastructure Initiative in September gave an update on the status of such projects in three cities—Atlanta, Austin, and St. Paul.
Improved connectivity leads to better cities and more profitable buildings, and data can play a crucial role in analyzing that connectivity and planning to maximize it, said a keynote speaker at the ULI Asia Pacific Leadership Convivium in Singapore.
In many American downtown areas and commercial centers, improvement districts are used as tools for revitalization, placemaking, and economic development. They improve the street presence and provide important marketing services for local businesses. But what if they could tackle larger infrastructure needs? Better yet, what if commercial real estate owners and investors could attract billions of public dollars and, in the process, create a new way to build roads, interchanges, and other important projects?
The United States has fallen behind other nations in crafting public/private partnerships to leverage resources for critically needed infrastructure improvements. A global panel of experts explores how that might be changed.
Transportation demand management policies that require access to travel options as part of the development process can be highly effective in the creation of communities that provide mixed-use, higher-density development without increasing traffic congestion, according to a new ULI publication.
China’s largest insurer is backing the nation’s ambitious smart city program with investment in technology, panelists said during the ULI Asia Pacific Leadership Convivium, held in Shenzhen, China.
A ULI Advisory Services panel toured South Sacramento, California, in September, meeting with more than 75 city and county officials, local business leaders, residents, and other stakeholders. The four sponsors—Sacramento Regional Transit, Sacramento Council of Governments, Sacramento Municipal Utility District, and Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District—asked the ULI advisory panel to outline a plan for kick-starting a retrofit of the two transit-adjacent neighborhoods into transit-oriented neighborhoods. Their goals were to promote equitable, healthy, and inclusive community development that fosters job and income growth, housing options, and healthy neighborhood amenities with more convenient access to transit, retail, and services.
The ever-increasing traffic congestion in South Florida, a region that includes Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties, has not gone unnoticed by either local officials or private companies, both of which have been working on solutions to traffic woes for years. At ULI South Florida/Caribbean’s ULI Miami Investor Symposium in late October, two speakers—one from government and another from the private sector—laid out their plans to alleviate some of the congestion.
Just as a century ago, when the arrival of the personal automobile fundamentally changed our society, the advent of AVs as our main mode of transportation will trigger another shift in people’s lives. To ensure that the changes will enhance the urban experience, cities and their private sector partners need to start planning for this new world.
Though driverless vehicles are expected to be commercially available in the next few years, the shift to their use is likely to occur gradually and in phases over several decades, panelists said at ULI’s Spring Meeting in Detroit. That long process will allow vehicles to be tested and improved. It also will enable the development of urban infrastructure—such as smart roads and traffic management systems that communicate continuously with many vehicles at once—that would make them work better, said panelists.
Autonomous vehicles, smart cities, and how Arizona is poised on the leading edge of what Timothy Burr, director of public policy for Lyft, dubbed “the third transportation evolution” were the recurring themes of ULI Arizona’s latest Trends Day.
Urban planners and technology experts are hard at work bringing “smart city” technology—autonomous transportation, digital sensors, smart grids, and, yes, artificial intelligence—to a city near you. These were among the takeaways from a panel discussion at the 2018 ULI Carolinas Meeting in Greenville, South Carolina.
