ULI’s upcoming 2016 Fall Meeting, October 24-27 in Dallas, will feature several events that focus on health and the built environment.

Jump to day:
Monday, October 24
Tuesday, October 25
Wednesday, October 26
Thursday, October 27

Monday, October 24

Building Healthy Places Interest Forum
(by invitation only)
Omniplan, Inc.
10:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
The fourth Building Healthy Places Interest Forum will be held in conjunction with Fall Meeting in Dallas. This forum will bring together leaders in health, wellness, and real estate to discuss what they are doing, planning, and observing in the field. These forums are designed to be content-heavy, interactive discussions and exchange.

Follow the Trail: Mixed Use and TOD along Fort Worth’s Trinity Trail (Tour, Separate Ticket Required)
8:15 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Trail-oriented development is becoming increasingly popular. New urban and suburban infill retail and mixed-use development is exploding along the Trinity Trail as millennials and others are attracted to Fort Worth’s 40-mile-plus hiking, biking, and walking trail, the Trinity Trail. Ride the TRE train to Fort Worth and then tour three innovative mixed-use projects currently underway, each with its own blend of uses and approach to the Trinity Trail location.

Out of Thin Air and into the Heart of the City (Tour, Separate Ticket Required)
8:30 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Bridging the CBD core and popular Uptown district, Klyde Warren Park is the definition of connectivity. Physically uniting two parts of the city that were long divided by a sunken freeway, the park has exceeded expectations by bringing together people of all incomes, races, and backgrounds in downtown’s new outdoor living room. This ULI Urban Open Space Award–winning park has turned a gaping chasm into the city’s hottest market for new office and residential towers, with construction cranes in every direction. Begin with a walking tour of the Dallas Art District, home to buildings designed by four Pritzger Prize–winning architects. Then enter the park and explore this urban phenomenon in detail, from how the park was constructed with traffic constantly flowing beneath, to the programming that fuels its popularity, and the incredible building boom that has followed.

TOD in Uptown Beyond: the Inside Story (Tour, Separate Ticket Required)
8:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Mass transit has helped transform downtown Dallas and the commercial nodes close to the urban core. As walkability and access to rail become required lifestyle options for millennials, the central business district (CBD) has attracted new tenants seeking to retain their young, creative workforces who commute by rail. Ride DART to Dallas’s first transit-oriented development (TOD), Mockingbird Station, to see its evolution. Move on to the Boulevard, where TOD is extending the Southern Methodist University campus. On the return, stop at West Village, the commercial hub of Uptown, and from there take the trolley back to the CBD. Getting the right mix remains critical for successful TOD; see what is working and what challenges remain.

Foodies, Come One, Come All (Tour, Separate Ticket Required)
1:30 – 5:00 p.m.
No chain restaurants welcome here. Begin your locavore experience in the Bishop Arts District, where small entrepreneurs bootstrapped an aging commercial area into a burgeoning restaurant, local retail goods, and multifamily housing destination. But success breeds its own issues: traffic, lack of parking, rising real estate prices. See how a strong neighborhood group is tackling these concerns. Then move on to West Dallas, where a soaring new Calatrava bridge once referred to as the “bridge to nowhere” now leads to a district characterized by “I want to be there.” A unique restaurant incubator known as Trinity Groves has turned the rule of “retail follows rooftops” on its head. Learn about the incubator concept and its owner’s vision for this neighborhood, where multifamily developments and even new single-family homes are springing up in a formerly industrial area just west of downtown Dallas. Walk over the Trinity River’s broad floodway on the reclaimed old bridge, now a linear park.

Rails, Trails, and Cocktails (Tour, Separate Ticket Required)
1:30 – 4:30 p.m.
Hop on a bike for an intriguing trip along a former rail line now connecting downtown Dallas with residences, restaurants, and parks to the north. The Katy Trail has become a social phenomenon, mixing outdoor activity with demand for restaurants and high-rise living. Rental rates soar with proximity to the trail, and outdoor bars facing the trail thrive on evenings and weekends. We will visit some of these hot spots as we wind our way along the trail, viewing everything from amenity-rich residences to historic suburban retail along the thriving Knox Henderson corridor. Return through “Deep Ellum” on the east end of the CBD to see the latest reinvention of this historic commercial and blues-era music hub and the challenges created by its lack of connectivity to the rest of the central city.

Tuesday, October 25

The Economic Value of Creative Placemaking: Breakfast Program
(Download flyer with more information)
7:00 – 8:00 a.m.
Join the ULI’s visiting fellow for creative placemaking Juanita Hardy, Michelle Johnson from the Kresge Foundation, and other ULI members to network and learn about how arts and culture opportunities within real estate development projects can enhance community health and improve economic value.

The ULI Changing World Speaker Series: Shaping Cities and Communities
(General Session)
11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Cities and communities are shaped by the ideas and interactions of the people within them. Thought leaders will shine a spotlight on how creating community and accelerating innovation can revitalize and reconnect cities and neighborhoods.

Creative Placemaking Pop Up Café: Growing Value through Art and Cultural Assets
ULI Central
2:30 – 3:00 p.m.
Placemaking—combining elements of the built environment in a compelling way that attracts people—is the essence of real estate development. Creative placemaking takes that concept a step further. As Anne Markusen and Ann Gadwa Nicodemus wrote, “Creative placemaking animates public and private spaces, rejuvenates structures and streetscapes, improves local business viability and public safety, and brings diverse people together to celebrate, inspire, and be inspired.”

If done well, creative placemaking can deliver high value to its stakeholders, including the community, developers, and public and private partners. Leveraging art and cultural assets is an important component of building healthier places to live and work. At this Fall Meeting Pop Up Breakfast, hear from ULI Senior Visiting Fellow Juanita Hardy and Kresge Foundation Program Officer Michelle Johnson, learn about exemplary creative placemaking projects, and share your knowledge about best practices. See you there!

Wednesday, October 26

A New Life for Urban and Suburban Arterials (Concurrent Session)
9:30 – 10:45 a.m.
Every community in the country aspires to be more vibrant and healthy, but underperforming commercial corridors can stand in the way of those goals. Hear lessons learned from the ULI Healthy Corridors Project and get a download on effective strategies and tools that can be used to transform corridors in your community into thriving places.

Out of Thin Air: Klyde Warren Park—How a Deck Park Connected Two Urban Districts and Became a Community Gathering Place and Catalyst for New Development (Concurrent Session)
9:30 – 10:45 a.m.
A public/private partnership initiated planning in 2004 to create a park over the sunken highway dividing Dallas’s historic CBD from its growing Uptown neighbor. Within less than a decade, Klyde Warren Park—a five-acre, ULI Urban Open Space Award–winning oasis—emerged as an outdoor gathering place that unites and engages Dallas residents as well as visitors from around the world. The area surrounding this vibrant setting is now the downtown area’s hottest submarket for new office and residential development, commanding the city’s highest rents. This session will cover forces that came together to fund the park, challenges in constructing it over an operating freeway, and its emergence as a focal point for the development boom that is reshaping Dallas’s downtown.

Dallas’s Affordable and Mixed-Income Housing Plan (Concurrent Session)
9:30 – 10:45 a.m.
In February 2016, the city of Dallas requested a ULI Advisory Services panel to develop recommendations for expanding mixed-income housing opportunities throughout the city. The panel addressed challenges of segregation, disinvestment, and housing affordability that have worsened over time even as Dallas overall has prospered—a dynamic playing out in many cities across the United States. At this session, panel participants and local developers and officials will discuss what Dallas is doing—and what other cities can do to create mixed-income communities.

Cultivating Development Pop Up Café: Linking Food and Real Estate
ULI Central
10:45 – 11:15 a.m.
Homebuyers and developers are developing an appetite for food-based amenities, such as working farms, community gardens, food halls, restaurants, and grocery stores. These features are increasingly adding value to real estate. In this session, hear highlights from the new report Cultivating Development: Trends and Opportunities at the Intersection of Food and Real Estate. Learn about how the growing interest and awareness in fresh, local food is spurring innovation in development projects. And sample free freshly squeezed juice. See you there!

Anchor Institutions and Innovation Districts: Implications for Real Estate (Concurrent Session)
11:15 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Anchor institutions and innovation districts are key drivers of economic development, and are instrumental in attracting and retaining talent. The current competition for talent at a global, national, and regional scale is influenced by how these institutions and districts capitalize on and enhance the attributes of the neighborhoods in which they are located. Explore the implications that the creation of new anchor institutions and innovation districts have on land use and real estate investment in urban areas. Hear from an international panel drawing on examples from both large and medium-sized urban areas in the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

Follow the Food: How a Famed Restaurateur’s Unique Idea Transformed the Forgotten Neighborhood of Bonnie and Clyde into One of Dallas’s Hottest New Locations (Concurrent Session)
1:30 – 2:45 p.m.
In 2005, restaurant legend Phil Romano and two investors began to assemble 100-plus acres of land in West Dallas, an area separated from the CBD by the Trinity River and long stigmatized by racism, poverty, neglect, unchecked industrialization, and failed efforts at social renewal. Fast-forward ten years and one sees a new Santiago Calatrava–designed bridge linking the area to the interstate highway network, a companion walking bridge, a vibrant restaurant district as well as burgeoning multifamily and for-sale housing developments that have rippled into surrounding submarkets. Hear Romano explain what attracted him to the land, the opportunities he saw that others didn’t, the role of the “restaurant incubator catalyst,” and plans for the future. Also learn from multifamily and for-sale developers about anticipated demographics as well as the public sector’s involvement in terms of infrastructure investment and existing neighborhood preservation.

Artfully Building Cities: Can Cultural Attractions Drive Private Development? The Dallas and Fort Worth Stories (Concurrent Session)
1:30 – 2:45 p.m.
The Fort Worth Cultural District occupies a park-like setting on the west side of the city, separated from the urban core by the Trinity River and a mile-wide swath of formerly industrial land that is now urbanizing. Dallas took a different approach, moving its major cultural institutions from the Fair Park area east of downtown to the inner ring of the central business district two decades ago with a deliberate plan to generate private development investment in and around its Arts District. Learn about these two different approaches to painting the urban canvas.

No Parking Zone: Adapting Parking for the Future (Concurrent Session)
3:15 – 4:30 p.m.
More than half of all Americans say they’d prefer to live in places where they did not have to drive their cars. Municipalities are reducing or eliminating parking requirements for new development near transit. Electric vehicles are increasingly popular. And, of course, the driverless car is almost here. So, what does the future hold for cars and parking? And how can designers “future proof” new parking facilities to ensure they don’t become obsolete structures? Hear a panel of experts discuss their ideas and experiences regarding the future of surface and structured parking facilities, as well as a thought-provoking conversation around how the overall streetscape is adapting to accommodate the needs of pedestrians, cyclists, and the autonomous vehicle.

Food and Real Estate: Cutting-Edge Trends (Concurrent Session)
3:15 – 4:30 p.m.
From urban markets to rooftop gardens to farm-oriented residential communities, a focus on food is providing a rich arena for innovation that can improve outcomes for real estate business and practice, people, and the planet. How are real estate developers and cities embracing food as a development focus? And how can this focus translate into enhancements to health, environmental sustainability, social equity, food system security, and the bottom line? Hear about key trends, pioneering developments, and new innovations at the nexus of these issues.

Fort Worth: A River Runs through It (Concurrent Session)
3:15 – 4:30 p.m.
While Fort Worth’s growth is sometimes perceived as less robust than Dallas, Fort Worth surpasses Dallas in its ambitious development projects that are redefining the relationship edge of the Trinity River as it flows through the city. Hear development visionaries talk about the iconic projects that are creating a sustainable, walkable, navigable corridor that is connecting Fort Worth via a river.

Thursday, October 27

The Well-Tempered City and the Future of Urban Life (General Session)
10:45 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
As the 21st century progresses, metropolitan regions will increasingly be affected by a series of global megatrends: climate change with attendant droughts and heat waves, income inequality, educational and health disparities, aging, housing insecurity, migrations, and many more. All of these will be accompanied by a heightened sense of volatility and uncertainty. And the financial volatility of the interconnected global economy will only make many regions more vulnerable. But there are five characteristics that cities and metropolitan regions can develop to not only help prepare for these megatrends, but to thrive. Join Jonathan Rose as he shares these five characteristics outlined in his new book, The Well-Tempered City, and discusses creating a higher purpose for cities.

Finding the Perfect MIX (Concurrent Session)
3:00 – 4:15 p.m.
Cities and communities want more of it. Consumers have a high preference for it. But the reality of implementing a successful mixed-use strategy is challenging. From capital sources reluctant to fund projects to developers struggling to land creditworthy tenants and fill storefront space to city requirements that are out of step with market reality. Learn how two regions are overcoming the obstacles through public/private partnerships, understanding their residents and citizens, and taking advantage of new market trends to create revitalized, energetic, and authentic places where people want to be.