Public Policy
As a 501(c)3, ULI does not engage in lobbying. There are certain best practices such as building codes and zoning where the industry's understanding has evolved over time. The insurance industry also dictates some of what can be built and where. The U.S. tax code can also play a role in examples like Opportunity Zones.
Decades of underfunded upkeep across federal properties have created a mounting repair backlog that threatens agency operations and could grow dramatically without portfolio reductions and policy reforms.
Redevelopment and one family’s fight reshaped a city.
U.S. House and Senate housing bills now moving toward reconciliation would reshape federal policies that affect housing supply, finance, zoning incentives, and development feasibility across markets.
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.
Joseph C. Canizaro, a past chair and trustee of ULI, passed away at age 88 on June 20, 2025. A member of ULI for more than 50 years, Canizaro built one of New Orleans’ most influential real estate development companies, Columbus Properties, which helped shape the city’s skyline.
During the summer of 1910, W. Ashbie Hawkins, an African American lawyer, purchased a home at 1834 McCulloh Street, an affluent—and all-white—neighborhood in Baltimore, Maryland. He rented the home to his law partner (and brother-in-law), George McMechen, an African American graduate of Yale Law School.
Revisions to Baltimore’s zoning code include a new zoning category—“industrial mixed-use”—which both city officials and local developers hope will spur economic development while preserving neighborhood character throughout the city.
The NLC and ULI announced that mayors from four U.S. cities—Anchorage, Alaska; Grand Rapids, Michigan; San Jose, California; and Washington, D.C.—have been selected as the 2017 class of Daniel Rose fellows by the Rose Center for Public Leadership in Land Use.
It requires strong partnerships among school districts, the community, and developers to place improved schools at the heart of a new development.
The nine-hole golf course at the Charles R. Drew Charter School gets a lot of use during an average school day. That golf is a dedicated subject at a southern school is not exactly remarkable—but how this came to be is. Two decades ago, the golf course was closed—and as decrepit as the East Lake Meadows housing project that sat on its edge.
The car-centric city is becoming a thing of the past, as evidenced by changes in Houston, Oklahoma City, and Charlotte, North Carolina, said panelists at the ULI Spring Meeting, with transportation leaders treating infrastructure as a real estate asset.
Increasingly, it is the ability—and willingness—of state and local governments to pay the ongoing cost of operation and maintaining new transportation projects that dictates whether capital will be invested in the infrastructure itself, according to a panel of experts at the ULI Spring Meeting in Houston.
Federal changes could promote TOD that functions better—and is easier to build.
A transformative residential development capitalized on old rail-yard land in the heart of the city.
Experts on affordable housing and members of ULI’s Affordable/Workforce Housing Council discuss how to make affordable housing less costly to build and more supportive for residents.
Banking and finance regulations—and government gridlock—are other top concerns voiced by survey respondents.
As he completes his tenth term as Charleston, South Carolina’s mayor—and his 40th year in office—Joseph P. Riley Jr. could speak only of all that he has left to do and how little time he has to do it.
As U.S. home prices have bounced back, activists, advocates, and community developers have struggled to make housing more affordable.
Six years after a deadly heat wave, Melbourne has adopted climate-change policies which include an initiative to do what might seem impossible: to reduce the central city’s average temperature by 7 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) by 2030.
The big housing news of 2015 so far has been the Obama administration’s announcement that the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) will reduce the annual premiums new borrowers pay for FHA-insured home mortgage loans by 50 basis points—a half percentage point. But what impact will that have on affordability?
From 1971 to 2008, only five states passed legislation enabling land banks; but in the last six years, another eight have done so. As vacancies and blight have plagued parts of the United States still recovering from recession and the mortgage foreclosure crisis, so too has land banking grown. There are now some 120 land banks and land-banking programs in 13 states, with West Virginia joining the list in 2014.
The United States is undergoing a “pivotal period of demographic change” that will be as important to the 21st century as the baby boom was to the 20th century, according to William H. Frey, demographer for the Brookings Institution and author of Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics Are Remaking America.
While the insurance industry is developing new risk standards for natural disasters, according to a ULI white paper, the real estate sector and governments also must play an active role in climate change adaptation
In an excerpt from his 2013 John T. Dunlop Lecture, J. Ronald Terwilliger suggests society should focus less on subsidizing higher-income homeowners and more on helping lower-income renters, as well as low-wealth homebuyers.
How public and private sector leaders are partnering to fix the Motor City.
The influence of climate change could offset the benefits of better data when governments map the areas at risk.
While voters were deciding on control of the U.S. Congress and several state houses, they were also voting on 146 ballot measures, many of which benefited plans for smarter growth and green space.
In an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, promote multimodal transportation, and create a diversity of land uses, California has enacted a bill that will alter the way that transportation impacts are evaluated under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
The U.S. Surgeon General urged land use professionals to partner with him in his nationwide campaign to curb the rise of chronic diseases and obesity and to encourage a physically active lifestyle, in a talk at the National Institutes of Health.
The ULI Terwilliger Center for Housing has announced the winners of this year’s housing awards, a program that celebrates and promotes the exemplary efforts of real estate and public policy leaders from across the country who are working to expand affordable and workforce housing opportunities.
