2021 ULI SPRING MEETING
Connect with the World of Real Estate
May 10 - 12, 2021
Global Online
Connect with the World of Real Estate
May 10 - 12, 2021
The future of real estate is clear: buildings must reach net zero by 2050. As BlackRock CEO Larry Fink stated in his 2021 Letter to CEOs, “As the transition accelerates, companies with a well-articulated long-term strategy, and a clear plan to address the transition to net zero, will distinguish themselves with their stakeholders by inspiring confidence that they can navigate this global transformation.”
The task may seem daunting; how do real estate owners and developers get their buildings to net zero? Technologies exist today to enable buildings to meet that net zero target. This session will feature 5 of them: sensors, heat pumps, solar panels, battery storage, and building envelopes. Experts from Siemens, BlocPower, Black Bear Energy, and Entuitive will provide a Pecha Kucha-style, rapid-fire summary of how these technologies support a building in achieving net zero while also supporting the bottom line.
As climate change accelerates, real estate assets like the New York City Housing Authority’s are increasingly exposed. One of the country’s largest landlords, NYCHA houses over 400,000 residents. Though new construction can be designed to withstand flooding, extreme heat, or stronger storms, public housing authorities like NYCHA need solutions for their existing buildings – which, like much of the current global building stock, were not built with worsening weather in mind.
That’s where building retrofits come in as a key strategy for protecting occupants and enhancing value. For example, retrofits that boost resilience to flooding, extreme heat, and air pollution can also improve energy efficiency and occupant comfort while reducing operating costs. NYCHA has already begun extensive flooding retrofit work on its portfolio and is scaling up that effort to meet these broad resilience and sustainability goals.
Join this on-demand session to hear from NYCHA’s Department of Resilience and Recovery in conversation with private and nonprofit experts in retrofit design and construction as they discuss NYCHA’s work so far and the ins and outs of creating a model for retrofitting existing buildings, NYCHA-owned or otherwise. This conversation will draw on a recent ULI Technical Assistance Panel hosted by ULI NY and advised by ULI’s Urban Resilience program on retrofitting NYCHA’s Marlboro Houses, a coastal public housing development in Brooklyn damaged by Hurricane Sandy.
The ULI Terwilliger Center’s 2021 Home Attainability Index provides practitioners with an easily accessible resource that can set a data-informed foundation for regional discussions of housing needs and solutions. Specifically, the Index provides a high-level snapshot of the extent to which a housing market provides a range of housing choices attainable to the regional workforce, with an intentional focus on issues related to racial, socioeconomic, and intraregional disparities and inequities. This session will provide an overview of the Index’s purpose and core components, highlight national findings based on the 2021 Index data, demonstrate more targeted findings from a sample of regions, and discuss what the data and evidence tells us about the mid-to-long term impact of COVID-19 on households and housing markets.
Accessory Dwelling Units or ADUs – a broad term for secondary housing units such as coach houses, granny flats, and attic and basement units – are emerging as a solution for expanding housing options for people of all ages. ADUs can enhance affordability, diversify housing types, generate wealth and income for owners, enable family or caregivers to live nearby, and create incremental or “gentle” density for communities. Creating equitable legal, financial, and communications frameworks can help ensure that ADUs meet their full potential. In this on-demand session, learn how ULI Chicago has helped drive ADU policy reform in the city, and how to unlock the power of ADUs in your community.
Learning Objectives:
A well-being framework provides an approach to more holistically and accurately understand individual and community human health and quality of life. Well-being frameworks center equity and objectively and subjectively measure how people perceive the quality of their lives. The frameworks are reflective of community values and encapsulate the multi-faceted aspects of human health—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. As we acknowledge and remedy the damaging impacts of our industry’s past policies and actions (redlining for example), prioritizing well-being provides an approach to address inequities, build urban resiliency, and strengthen social cohesion.
Christina N. Contreras, ULI/Martin Bucksbaum Senior Visiting Fellow and Principal & Founder of Living Ecology Studio, is using a well-being framework to explore how privately-owned and managed ‘third places’ improve human health and well-being outcomes. In this session, Contreras and additional speakers will discuss how well-being frameworks can provide a method for the real estate industry to better understand and deliver on what matters most to individuals and communities.
Based on ULI’s recent report on building electrification, this panel will dive into the business case for, challenges, and opportunities of moving commercial real estate towards an all-electric future. Hear from two real estate firms, Winn Companies and Hudson Pacific Properties, on their progress to electrifying their portfolios.
The last few years have seen significant shifts in what investors are requiring from asset owners about their sustainability performance. Their interest in the data that underpins certification and in expanding beyond what has traditionally been “green buildings” has been driven by big trends in how our societies live, work and play – all of which has been significantly shaped by the pandemic and the growing financial risks related to climate change. This session will highlight these larger trends, what it means to go beyond “green” to a more holistic sustainability approach and what a building certification process needs to include to deliver assurance.
CoeoSpace is an open data technology platform that allows occupants to find space and account holders to share and promote space in a standard and unifying way using our custom, matching algorithm. Through the use of technology and AI, CoeoSpace complements a properties traditional marketing with progressive digital technology so your available space can be seen openly and leased more efficiently and quickly.
In month 13 of virtual work, many of us are enjoying the benefits of increased flexibility in our schedules, but for some, full-time virtual work is reported to have some negative consequences. Is virtual work here to stay? The dust is settling, and the results are not uniform…
As cities begin to re-open, how will our cities and central business districts change in order to recover? How can our cities and downtowns rebuild so that they can be resilient?
The Gensler Research Institute has insights from their latest cities research, The City Pulse, that challenges planners and urban designers to rethink and reimagine their cities and central business districts.