The ULI Randall Lewis Center for Sustainability in Real Estate and the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS) brought together executives in the commercial real estate and property insurance industry on May 13, 2025, in conjunction with the ULI Spring Meeting and Resilience Summit in Denver, Colorado, to discuss strategies for operating in this environment of growing risk. As Mary Ludgin, event facilitator and senior advisor at Heitman, noted, “Increased conversation between property owners and insurers is a crucial step in managing risk and controlling costs in a tumultuous time of heightened physical risk.”

Deep discounts, favorable financing, and long-term benefits are turning users into owners.

Private real estate owners and investors searching for clues on how tariffs are likely to affect commercial real estate are tuning in to what public REIT executives are saying. The word of the hour remains “uncertainty” as private and public real estate companies continue to watch and wait to see how the current administration’s trade policy and global tariffs continue to play out.

Although developers are skilled at building senior living communities that satisfy basic residential and health care needs, and that provide programs and amenities to cater to a variety of lifestyles, creating authentic, home-like environments that feel instantaneously familiar for this younger cohort is far more challenging. Such nuanced characteristics are distinctions in the market and can greatly ease the transition into senior living communities, not only for individuals, regardless of acuity level, but also for their families.

From resilient parks to bold adaptive reuse, this year’s winners redefine urban innovation and community impact across the Americas

10 inventive designs put housing within reach of low- and moderate-income individuals and families

Joseph C. Canizaro, a past chair and trustee of ULI, passed away at age 88 on June 20, 2025. A member of ULI for more than 50 years, Canizaro built one of New Orleans’ most influential real estate development companies, Columbus Properties, which helped shape the city’s skyline.

The awards celebrate a senior leader, a young professional and a DEI champion

Five experts from ULI’s Residential Neighborhood Development Council discuss the challenges and opportunities ahead for homebuilders; what buyers and renters want from their neighborhoods, and how they value sustainability and resilience; what state and local housing policies are effectively encouraging housing construction; and other trends.

Six months after urban wildfires devastated neighborhoods in Los Angeles, signs of rebuilding are evident. Although the landscape still resembles a charred war zone, many residential lots have been cleared with assistance from FEMA. In Altadena and Pacific Palisades—the communities that, together, lost more than 16,000 structures—some homeowners are overcoming huge hurdles, such as permitting and steep construction costs, and are expected to begin rebuilding this year. And builders are banding together in a new Builders Alliance to share resources and incrementally ease the massive housing shortage that plagued the city even before the fires.

Extreme weather events such as droughts and floods significantly impact vulnerable communities across the country—especially in places where the population continues to grow, creating even more tension between real estate demand and the risk of catastrophic flooding or drought. The good news is that shaping real estate projects around water-wise and flood-resilient measures can greatly mitigate water-related risks—and greatly enhance asset value at the same time.

Without climate adaptation, large corporations could face $1.2 trillion in annual losses by 2050, according to Lindsay Brugger, vice president of the Urban Resilience program at ULI’s Randall Lewis Center for Sustainability in Real Estate. Brugger delivered opening remarks at ULI’s sixth annual Resilience Summit on May 15 in Denver where more than 300 attendees gathered at the Hyatt to explore resilience and recovery locally and elsewhere.

We hope everyone is looking forward to warm-weather activities as summer has begun at ULI HQ in Washington, D.C. In case you missed it, we wanted to share the articles that resonated with the most readers in the first half of 2025.

The Johns Hopkins Institute for Planetary Health is poised to host the inaugural event of the 2025 Planetary Health Cities Symposium in Washington, D.C., on June 16. This event aims to address the urgent challenges posed by the degradation of Earth’s natural systems and the impact on human health and well-being. (

At the recent Homeless to Housed Symposium—part of the ULI 2025 Spring Meeting in Denver, Colorado—Jeff Olivet, a prominent expert in advancing solutions to homelessness, delivered a keynote address. In it, he not only contextualized the current state of homelessness in the United States but also provided a foundational framework for the forthcoming 10 Principles for Addressing Homelessness: A Guide for Commercial Real Estate & Finance.