Resetting Urban Land Use: What’s Next?

Whether centered on reset or recession, there is no shortage of provocative summaries about the game-changing new economy. As a legal practitioner who also writes about cities, I find the most value in on-the-ground intelligence of urban trends. In that context, a new, highly readable report from the Urban Land Institute fits the bill. [Disclosure: I am a dues-paying member of ULI and serve as a Vice-Chair of the ULI-Seattle District Council, an unpaid, volunteer position]. As co-author Uwe Brandes told me on Monday in Washington, D.C., "the reality is that we reflected the voices of implementation in today’s urban marketplace."

The report, What's Next, Real Estate in the New Economy, focuses on the relationships of demographic, financial, technological and environmental trends over the next decade. It explains how these trends are dramatically impacting urban planning, design and development practices, so much that "[t]he real estate world is hurtling into a different place and time."