Since 2011, ULI Greenprint has introduced its real estate members to emerging ESG technology and service providers by allowing ULI Greenprint members to nominate providers they have worked with to become “Innovation Partners.” Through this program, providers share their expertise with Greenprint members through webinars, newsletters, and in-person events.

Natural assets, combined with inventive design, help transform a global gateway.

Retailers face a multitude of challenges including online commerce with its 24/7 access. Panelists at the 2012 ULI Spring Meeting looked at significant steps major retailers have already taken to reshape the shopping experience for their customers, while integrating their physical stores with online sales.

Because of the economies of scale that chain stores rely on, most of their retail environments look identical to each other—but one well-known national food retailer has bucked this trend.

People are resuming travel. In some spots hotels are trading at prices that are above where they were in 2007. New York City just experienced record hotel occupancy rates this past May. As long as the market did not get overbuilt, hotels are coming back, says Greg Cory, principal of San Francisco–based Land Use Economics LLC and chairman of ULI’s Recreation Development Council. However, areas that got overbuilt are predicted to take longer to recover.

At ULI Europe’s session on the impact of the digital revolution on real estate, attendees learned about the future of bricks-and-mortar retailing in light of “M-commerce, S-commerce, and QR codes.”

Vietnam has arrived on the international property development market in a big way—and brought with it a strikingly international style. But uncertainties linger about the future.

The young have been leading the shift away from bricks-and-mortar stores, and this shift in purchasing habits is accelerating as the creators of virtual stores make it more fun and convenient to purchase items via computer, day or night.

With residential real estate in the doldrums for the past few years, homebuilding companies are looking for different areas for growth. As such, firms like Toll Brothers and Lennar Corporation are pursuing opportunities that have synergies with, but may fall outside of, their core homebuilding operations—for example, golf and country clubs. Learn what homebuilders should know before branching out.

On September 8, the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., hosted a panel discussion on how big-box development is affecting that city’s planning, land use, transportation, and economy as part of its DC Builds lecture series. Read how the opening of four new Wal-Mart stores—estimated to bring in a combined $200 million a year in sales—is poised to affect D.C.’s retail leakage problem.