Molly Maybrun, chief development officer of local developer Fifth Space, and Wallace Whittier, senior real estate officer for University of California, San Francisco, spoke at the 2025 ULI Fall Meeting about their collaboration to build a new proton therapy cancer center at Fifth Space’s Dogpatch Power Station, a multiphase master-planned mixed-use development on the waterfront at the southern edge of San Francisco’s Mission Bay.

The 2026 Emerging Trends in Real Estate® Asia Pacific report, published jointly by ULI and PwC found a mood of cautious optimism among real estate professionals; however, respondents described considerable disparities in markets and sectors across the region. Tokyo was ranked as the top city for investment in the Emerging Trends survey, top of the table for the third consecutive year, followed by Singapore, Sydney, Osaka, and Seoul.

While the full impact of the pandemic has yet to be realized, commercial real estate faces new uncertainties, including questions about the AI boom’s longevity, the spending strength of the U.S. consumer, and debt sustainability. In response to increased competition for quality deals, commercial real estate firms are restructuring their operations, using diverse data sources, accessing new capital, and forming new partnerships.

Four exemplary real estate projects were named the overall winners of the 2025 ULI Europe Awards for Excellence from this year’s ten finalists. The diverse winning projects include a social housing project in Milan situated on an abandoned office development site, a new secondary school in Brussels developed in a former brewery, a new flexible life sciences hub in Stockholm, and an acute healthcare facility in Birmingham, which is intended as a catalyst for community regeneration.

Guy Kawasaki—chief evangelist at Canva, former chief evangelist for Apple, and bestselling author—summed up insights gleaned from his years in tech and as host of the Remarkable People podcast, interviewing such luminaries as Margaret Atwood, Tony Fauci, Jane Goodall, and Steve Wozniak.

For decades, civic leaders have tried to revitalize Market Street, San Francisco’s central thoroughfare, only to see their efforts founder. “I sometimes call it the great white whale of San Francisco,” says Eric Tao, managing partner at L37 Development in San Francisco and co-chair of ULI San Francisco. “Every new mayor, every new planning director, every new economic development director has chased that white whale.” This year, however, an international competition of ideas hosted and run by ULI San Francisco, with support from the ULI Foundation, generated fresh momentum for reimagining the boulevard. The competition drew 173 submissions from nine countries and sparked new conversations about the future of downtown San Francisco.

Best practices for acquisition and redevelopment

A new report by the construction scheduling platform Planera shows which U.S. states are adding the most new housing in 2025.

Few properties in South Florida, or ones well beyond the area, embody vision and resilience quite like Pier Sixty-Six. With its unmistakable spire-crowned tower, set along Fort Lauderdale’s storied Intracoastal Waterway, the landmark has defined the city’s skyline for more than half a century. As a multi-billion-dollar redevelopment of this 32 acre (13 ha) waterfront is now complete, Pier Sixty-Six stands as a model for how iconic real estate assets can be reborn, honoring their history while shaping the next century of urban waterfront development.

Multifamily buildings occupy structures with storied pasts. The rise of remote work and the continued housing shortage have led to a surge in the number of apartments being carved out of former office space—70,700 in 2025 compared to 23,100 in 2022, according to RentCafe. Developers are increasingly turning to structures with former lives—as offices or industrial or commercial buildings—to create multifamily housing that gives residents dwelling spaces that feel rooted in place and connected to the broader narrative of their communities.

The ongoing challenges in decarbonizing skyscrapers, warehouses, apartments, and myriad other types of buildings were a key topic during ULI’s 3^rd Real Estate Developer & Utility Convening on September 22—part of Climate Week NYC, the largest climate conference outside of the United Nations’ COP.

ULI’s Global Sustainability Outlook, launched in 2021 by the Randall Lewis Center, has become the organization’s annual barometer on the sustainability topics shaping real estate and land use. Each year, the report distills insights from global industry leaders to identify the top issues most likely to influence strategic decision-making in the year ahead and beyond.

The ULI Terwilliger Center for Housing has announced two winners for this year’s Jack Kemp Excellence in Affordable and Workforce Housing Award and three winners for the Center’s Award for Innovation in Attainable Housing. “ULI’s Terwilliger Center for Housing is excited to present the 2025 winners of the Kemp and Innovation awards,” said Aimee Witteman, Chief Impact Officer at ULI. “Each winner is showing the industry how to create more inclusive and affordable communities through housing production.”

Third edition evaluates top 30 global powerhouses report reveals world’s leading urban hubs rise in popularity post pandemic. Challenges include new economic conditions, rising costs, adaptation to hybrid work, innovation gaps, the climate imperative, and transition to social, mixed-use districts.

As congregations across North America grapple with shrinking membership and aging facilities, a new opportunity is emerging: transforming faith-owned land into affordable housing and community-serving spaces. At the 2025 ULI Fall Meeting in San Francisco, panelists in the session “Spiritual Brownfields: Declining Congregations and Opportunities for Housing on Faith-Owned Land” explored how churches and developers are partnering to bring mission-driven housing to underused sacred sites.