Sustainability

Adapting Building Design to the Effects of Climate Change

Implementing strategies at the building, development, and community levels can preserve functionality despite extreme weather.

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Leveraging Landscape: Tools for Urban Resilience

Landscape design can go beyond aesthetics to contribute to resilience in ways that save money and improve lives.

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Helping Building Owners and Cities Partner to Reach Efficiency Goals

With buildings accounting for 75 percent of U.S. electricity consumption, achieving these commitments will require the active participation and cooperation of the real estate sector. However, many U.S. cities are still in the very early stages of developing new policies and incentive programs to support the real estate industry in transitioning to more energy-efficient building development and management.

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ULI Urban Open Space Award Finalist: Baxi River Forest Island

Changsha is a bustling city of 7 million people in China’s central Hunan province. The Baxi River meanders through the city, carrying water flows that have created 15 scattered islands near the city. Seasonal flooding, rapid water flow, and constructed monocultures have caused escalating erosion, destabilization, and loss of habitat along the banks. Past approaches to managing the river have favored the creation of hard edges to protect land and property. With the two-mile-long (3.2 km), 156-acre (63 ha) Baxi River Forest Island, the local government tried a new approach. It embraced the river ecosystem, creating a new park that is helping both nature and people thrive.

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Recent Articles

  • ULI Urban Open Space Finalist: Ricardo Lara Linear Park

    July 27, 2018

    The Ricardo Lara Linear Park in Lynwood, California, demonstrates how underused land can be repurposed to benefit an entire community. Teamwork and creativity transformed a vacant five-acre (2 ha) stretch of land along Interstate 105 into a park that advances social equity, improves environmental health, and offers recreation spaces for all ages.

  • ULI Urban Open Space Award Finalist: Quequechan River Rail Trail

    The Quequechan River Trail is reusing an abandoned rail right-of-way to provide public access to the Quequechan River, offering benefits for the community of Fall River, Massachusetts, improving water quality, and creating valuable wetland habitat. In 1958, the construction of Interstate 195 split the city in half and blocked access to the river. The new trail, made possible through strong partnerships, now provides almost two miles (3.2 km) of trails to pedestrians and bicyclists and restores a connection to the Quequechan River.

  • ULI Urban Open Space Award Finalist: Levy Park

    As one of the only public green spaces in Houston’s Upper Kirby District, the underused Levy Park has been reimagined as an active, vibrant civic destination. The 5.9-acre (2.4 ha) public park offers free programming and public events, and includes a 40,000-square-foot (3,700 sq m) children’s garden, a 7,500-square-foot (700 sq m) rain garden, a 43,000-square-foot (4,000 sq m) event lawn, and a 2,500-square-foot (230 sq m) multipurpose performance space.

  • ULI Urban Open Space Award Finalist: Madrid Rio Park

    Madrid Rio Park was made possible by the burial of 25 miles (40 km) of urban motorways that had separated Madrid’s 6 million residents from the Manzanares River, which flows through the city. The park now occupies 360 acres (146 ha) of green space, with trails and urban beaches sharing space with art centers, playgrounds, and cafés, providing a link between city and river, and between the urban ecosystem and the vast Manzanares River basin.

  • Five Finalists Announced for ULI Urban Open Space Award

    The ULI Urban Open Space Award recognizes vibrant parks and open spaces that have been transformative in promoting healthy, sustainable, and equitable outcomes in their communities. This year, five projects were selected as finalists.

  • Building on the Reconnection of Parks and Waterways along Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River

    July 20, 2018

    Like many former industrial U.S. cities, Cleveland is starting to see the fruits of repurposing waterfront land as open space. After decades of neglect, Cleveland’s 25-acre (10 ha) Scranton Peninsula, located on the Cuyahoga River, has been acquired with the goal of creating a mixed-use, mid-rise neighborhood with views of downtown and prime access to the river.

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