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Urban planners and technology experts are hard at work bringing “smart city” technology—autonomous transportation, digital sensors, smart grids, and, yes, artificial intelligence—to a city near you. These were among the takeaways from a panel discussion at the 2018 ULI Carolinas Meeting in Greenville, South Carolina.

In a keynote at ULI South Carolina’s Capital Markets Conference, John Burns, author and CEO of John Burns Real Estate Consulting, explained how changing the way we think about age-based cohorts can help us better understand market trends and predict consumer behavior.

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.

Since 2000, Washington, D.C., has added more than 100,000 residents as a robust job market has attracted people both domestically and from abroad. The city’s population is expected to reach 1 million by 2045. The influx of new residents—most of whom are high-wage earners—has placed enormous pressure on the city’s housing market and has created new urgency around the production of so-called missing middle housing types.

While experts, speaking at the at the recent ULI Housing Opportunity 2016 conference in Boston, agree that a mixed-income environment is still the best platform to lift people out of poverty, they also said that new approaches and partnerships are needed to deliver on mixed income’s promise of economic mobility and racial and social integration.

How seven U.S. cities are tackling the future of downtowns

Twenty-five extraordinary developments from around the world have been selected as finalists for ULI’s 2017 Global Awards for Excellence, widely recognized as one of the land use industry’s most prestigious award programs.

At a panel discussion hosted by ULI Pittsburgh, experts highlighted the city’s interesting architecture, relatively affordable housing in walkable neighborhoods, and a strong outlook for the retail sector.

Logistics property developer GLP is taking advantage of new technologies to increase efficiency for its tenants. Chief executive officer Ming Mei told attendees at the ULI Asia Pacific Summit 2017 that his firm is using big data to improve efficiency in its logistics parks in China, analyzing everything from the temperature of cold-storage trucks to site selection for logistics tenants.

The Trepp LLC survey showed spreads stabilizing to even narrowing a bit during the most recent survey period. Deals appear to be happening as everyone looks over their shoulder waiting for the next shoe to fall somewhere in the global capital markets. So…hurry up and get your deals done while rates are as low.