The jobs numbers released this past Friday show unemployment continues unabated even as the federal stimulus program winds down and states and local governments continue to cut back on jobs. The lack of new jobs and the high rate of unemployment especially among the “Echo Boomers” who should be buying their first homes, estimated by some to be over 30%, will keep household formation, now a quarter of what it would normally be, low and housing demand stalled.

At nearly 78 million, Gen Y, aged 15- to 32-years old, is now the largest generation in the U.S. Early findings from an upcoming survey being published by the Urban Land Institute suggest that the echo boomer generation, or Gen Y, holds a high view of the American Dream –- despite the housing market collapse -- with the majority of respondents expecting to own homes within five years.

Panelists J. Ronald Terwilliger, Henry Cisneros, Steve Preston, and Bart Harvey shared their thoughts on how federal housing policy might be reshaped to strike a better balance between homeownership and renting following the recession during a panel moderated by Thomas S. Bozzuto, Sr. All the participants are members of the ULI Terwilliger Center Advisory Board.

By almost any measure, housing prices across the country have been rebounding in 2010. The National Association of Realtors reported the national median price of existing single-family homes rose 1% in August after rising almost 4% during the first half of 2010. Review the list of the Top 10 highest percentage gains in existing home prices during the first half of this year.

Anti-sprawl measures are tough for politicians to sell to constituents, so metro area leaders need to better explain to residents the benefits of transit-oriented development and policies that link transportation to housing. This was among the key points at a panel discussion October 4 on Capitol Hill titled “Suburban Solutions to Traffic Congestion,” moderated by ULI’s Maureen McAvey and sponsored by Gerald Connolly (D-Va.) and Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.).

Vancouver, British Columbia, architect Michael Katz has produced a modular system at only 220 square feet (20 sq m). In an effort to make the L41 sustainable, affordable, and innovative, Katz chose to construct the unit using cross-laminated timber (CLT), a new wood building product. The L41 home is designed as a studio house for one person or one couple. The L41 was manufactured by Ledcor, a large Vancouver-based contractor, in three modules that were shipped on a flatbed truck to the site and assembled in less than a day.

Nashville-based developer David McGowan knew a change of course was necessary to ensure continued success at Lenox Village, a mixed-use, new urbanist development in southeast Nashville. It was 2007 and the market for for-sale housing was slowing down while rental housing was still strong. Read how McGowan shifted the project in the face of the oncoming slowdown in the economy.

According to an analysis in Bloomberg Businessweek (July 26 – August 1, 2010), home prices in Asian cities, together with some Scandinavian countries, significantly increased during the first quarter 2010 as compared to the same period in 2009. How did housing prices in Europe and the United States compare?

Conservation development technologies have been around for decades, but only in the past few years have developers, conservation organizations, landowners, and local governments begun to understand the potential of these technologies to link land conservation with land development while providing meaningful protection of natural resources. Find out what conservation development is not.

It’s a mistake to ignore centuries of urban history when looking at city design and planning, writes Witold Rybczynski, a professor of real estate at the University of Pennsylvania, in his book “Makeshift Metropolis: Ideas About Cities.” Rybczynski acquaints us with some of the key historical names and approaches to urban planning, both successes and failures, and helps us understand how the lessons learned might apply to today’s ever-changing urban settings.