As concerns about the sustainability of the world’s love affair with the car and airplane grow, the European Union aims to put more people back on trains, a strategy that will require not only laying new tracks but refurbishing old stations. From Barcelona to Vilnius, some of these developments aim not only to make public transportation more convenient but to renew the quarter in which they are located.

The Austin Transit Partnership announced a partnership with an international design team led by HKS, UNStudio, and Gehl to create systemwide architecture and urban design for the light-rail program of Project Connect, a major expansion of Austin’s public transit system. Project Connect is a transformative, voter-approved investment that includes light rail, expanded bus routes, and more services across the city.

The New York Convention Center Operating Corporation announced the completion of the Javits Center’s new rooftop event space as part of its $1.5 billion expansion project on Manhattan’s West Side. The farm and event space, along with several other sustainable upgrades, builds on the success of the convention center’s robust sustainability program.

ULI has announced the launch of the Curtis Infrastructure Initiative, a multiyear initiative to identify and promote infrastructure solutions to create equitable, resilient cities and enhance long-term community value. The initiative aims to provide research and practical tools to help ULI members advance infrastructure investment and identify new solutions to local infrastructure issues, as well as directly support member engagement at the local level through the Institute’s 52 district councils.

This summer, Urban Land is profiling online and in print each finalist for 2020’s ULI Urban Open Space Award. The winner(s) will be announced in the fall. Learn more about award-winning and innovative open-space projects as part of the 2020 ULI Virtual Fall Meeting.

Insurers and investors adopt new models to calculate how the changing climate will affect long-term asset values.

Panelists talked about how the San Antonio region is faring versus other cities in Texas in attracting talented workers and corporate office tenants and where it can improve compared with cities of a similar size.

Autonomous vehicles will remake cities in ways we are only beginning to imagine. Architects and planners have to envision structures now that will fit into that future.

The next-generation wireless telecommunications technology known as 5G, which will operate at vastly higher speeds and be able to handle many times more devices than existing 4G networks, is likely to have significant impacts on the real estate industry, a speaker said at the 2018 ULI Spring Meeting in Detroit.

Detroit’s metropolitan area is slowly growing again, which means it’s time to focus on planning to accommodate more people in an area already light on transit infrastructure. For a place long known as Motor City, it has been an uphill battle to become a transit-oriented community, but what can the region do with its existing infrastructure in the short term?