In the past three years, the California Legislature has passed more than a dozen housing reforms addressing a swath of issues, including tenant protections, rent gouging, production of accessory dwelling units (ADUs), streamlined permitting for affordable and market-rate housing, new funding sources, and more. Though the pace may seem slow, there are signs of progress and hope for more in the future, panelists said at a ULI San Francisco event.

Which emerging real estate technologies will become the must-haves, and which will be the near misses? You can take your chances on a $100 doorbell, but if you are investing millions in a property or trying to run a profitable business, you cannot afford to waste resources on fads. Those two questions—what are the unintended consequences, and which technologies have staying power—are themes running throughout this special issue of Urban Land.

A new report from the ULI Greenprint Center for Building Performance shows that the real estate industry has made significant progress over the past 10 years in reducing carbon emissions and energy consumption while increasing asset value. Volume 10 of the Greenprint Performance Report™, which measures and tracks the performance of 8,916 properties owned by Greenprint’s members, demonstrates a 10-year improvement of 17 percent in energy use intensity, which is the annual energy consumption divided by gross floor area. The report also finds that Greenprint members are still on track to reduce carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2030.

A new definition of what constitutes a 100-year flood promises to alter how commercial and residential properties in Austin are built and protected, panelists said at a ULI Austin event in December. This effort arose from new data indicating that major storms in Texas dump more rain than had been previously estimated, with more than 2,000 buildings being added to the designated floodplain.

Best-selling author, entrepreneur, and New York University marketing professor Scott Galloway issued an impassioned call for the government breakup of Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple, telling attendees at the 2018 ULI Fall Meeting that the four giants of the digital-age economy have grown too large and powerful.

A new report from the Urban Land Institute’s Center for Sustainability and Economic Performance outlines ten fundamental principles for building resilient cities and regions that successfully anticipate, respond to, and recover from both immediate shocks such as hurricanes and other extreme weather events and long-term stresses such as sea-level rise, poverty, and declining population.

As the only major U.S. city without formal zoning, Houston has a reputation as a freewheeling place where anything goes. But in truth, a complex patchwork of public and private regulation has evolved to impose order.

Implementation of the Affordable Care Act has driven both health care–related job growth and demand for real estate in the United States. But health care REITs are not immune from external market challenges, and they have thrived in the current low interest rate environment. Plus, interest rate survey data from Trepp.

In her book The End of the Suburbs, Leigh Gallagher argues that while the suburbs suffered the worst during the housing bust, the recession is a catalyst for a much larger trend, driven by high fuel prices, the decline of the nuclear family, and the resurgence of cities. But she also says, “Not all suburbs are going to vanish.”

The built environment is having a critical impact on the physical and emotional well-being of residents and workers, said Richard Jackson, professor and chair of environmental health sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles Fielding School of Public Health, speaking to a group of land use, urban design, and community development experts in Washington, D.C.