Below are brief descriptions with dates and times of the events hosted, supported, or encouraged by the ULI Center for Sustainability and Economic Performance during the 2020 ULI Spring Meeting. Look here for activities focused on health and wellness, parks and open space, climate mitigation and adaptation, building performance, and resilience.

Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Randall Lewis/Building Healthy Places Forum at the Spring Meeting in Toronto

7:30 am – 4:00 pm

Open to all attendees

Off-Site: Forum participants will meet at Sidewalk Labs and visit multiple Toronto-area venues throughout the day

The 10th in the series of Building Healthy Places Forums will be held in conjunction with ULI’s Spring Meeting in Toronto, Canada. The day long Forum, generously supported by ULI Foundation Governor Randall Lewis, will bring together leaders in health, wellness, and real estate to showcase and share what they are doing, planning, and observing in the field. The Forum promises to be a content-heavy, interactive, and dynamic exchange of ideas.

The Forum is organized in collaboration with ULI member leaders and will focus on sharing information about Toronto-based projects at the intersection of health and the built environment and applying lessons from these projects to the work of Forum participants who will gather from across the country.

For more information: [email protected]

Indigenous Placekeeping

9:00 am – 5:00 pm

Open to All Attendees; Separate Ticket Required

Off-Site: TBD

This is a story waiting to be told. It is a powerful voice that has been quieted down for much too long. As Canada commits to a process of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, Toronto seeks to rise to the occasion—first by acknowledging the land and commemorating the thousands of years of Indigenous occupation, then by recognizing centuries of sordid history, leading us to the present day. The tour will speak to the history of Indigenous peoples, buried deep in the fabric of the city. It will also raise awareness of present-day approaches to reconciliation in an urban setting. By engaging speakers from a variety of backgrounds, the tour and conversations will seek to elucidate how a contemporary city can meaningfully embrace its Indigenous past, present, and future.

Well-Being: Realigning Our Cities

9:30 am – 5:30 pm

Open to All Attendees; Separate Ticket Required

Off-Site: TBD

One hundred years ago, cities were planned to fend off infectious diseases—the “garden city” movement had begun and with it the flight to the suburbs. Today, we are striving to design cities and buildings that counteract chronic diseases—that is, diseases derived from our lifestyles. Hence, designs strive to create the conditions where people can choose to live healthy lifestyles: daily activities, mental health, social well-being, and environmental health are the new goals. The tour will visit a number of neighborhoods, parks, health facilities, and buildings that have reoriented their sense of purpose to meaningfully improving the well-being of the community and the environment, thus changing the conversation, as well as the ultimate designs.

Center for Sustainability Happy Hour

4:00 pm – 6:00 pm

By invitation Only

Off-Site: Steam Whistle Brewing

Join ULI’s Center for Sustainability and Economic Performance to celebrate progress in promoting health, sustainability and resilience in buildings and communities. This event is invite-only.

For more information: [email protected]

ULI Welcome Reception

6:00 pm – 7:30 pm

Open to All Attendees

Off-Site: CN Tower, 290 Bremner Blvd

Randall Lewis Health Mentorship Program Dinner

7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

By invitation Only

Off-Site

Mentors and mentees participating in the third cohort of the ULI/Randall Lewis Health Mentorship program will gather for a cohort dinner. This private event is invite-only. If you are interested in participating as a mentor in the fourth cohort, please email [email protected]. 

For more information: [email protected]

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Workshop: Lessons from the 10-Minute Walk Campaign 

7:30 am – 8:45 am

By invitation Only

On-site: TBD

Lessons learned from 10-Minute Walk Advisory Services Panels, National Study Visits, and Technical Assistance Panels will be discussed. This is intended to spur a conversation on what makes high quality parks and open spaces.

For more information: [email protected]

Greenprint Performance Committee Members-Only Breakfast

8:30 am – 9:30 am

By invitation Only

Off-site: TBD

The Greenprint Performance Committee will meet for a Members-Only Breakfast on Wednesday morning of ULI Spring Meeting. Additionally, Greenprint has invited local real estate sustainability leads from Canadian asset owners/investors to join the breakfast. This is a chance for leaders in the community of practice to gather and share experiences, challenges, and solutions regarding ESG in real estate development, acquisition, operations, and disposition.

For more information: [email protected]

Gentrification Fishbowl – Spring Meeting 2020

10:00 am – 11:30 am

Open to All Attendees

On-site: Metro Toronto Convention Centre

Welcome to the fishbowl. You are invited to join a facilitated conversation with industry and advocacy experts about two forces at work in gateway cities around the world; the natural tension that exists between the need for cities to encourage economic and housing development and the gentrification, displacement, and community backlash that often results from investment in target neighborhoods. This session will resemble the popular Gentrification Fishbowls from ULI’s Spring 2019 meeting in Nashville and Fall 2019 meeting in Washington DC. Unlike the typical frontal panel experience, this session offers the chance for 12 different panelists to select how actively they wish to participate in or listen to a conversation. We will explore this topic through a uniquely designed exercise involving two circles of chairs: an inner circle, where speakers will be prompted to converse based on a select group of questions, and an outer circle, where participants are invited to actively listen to the conversation within.

Capturing Value in Toronto’s High-Rise Multifamily Towers with Sustainable Retrofits

10:30 am – 11:30 am

Open to all attendees

On-site: Metro Toronto Convention Centre

In February 2020, ULI hosted an Advisory Services Panel in Toronto to determine how the public and private sector can work together to drive the sustainable redevelopment of the city’s approximately 1,000 multifamily high-rise towers. Often overlooked for investment, the buildings are currently inefficient, uncomfortable for tenants, and sometimes unsafe. However, there is huge potential for real estate to add value to these buildings while also helping the city provide safer affordable and workforce housing, local job opportunities, and key resources for residents (including transportation and retail/grocery). To solve this challenge, panelists determined the most cost effective strategies for achieving deep retrofits to these towers, how to finance the investments, whether there are any policy tools to incentivize the market, and how these investments in energy efficiency can also support the city’s resilience, social equity, and affordable housing goals. For this session, experts that participated in the panel will provide an overview of their recommendations for the local market and outline how they can be a model for the rest of Canada.

For more information: [email protected]

Center for Sustainability Open House

11:30 am – 1:00 am

Open to all attendees

On-site: Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Member Engagement Area

Have you heard about the ULI Center for Sustainability and Economic Performance’s work but are not sure how to get involved? Want to learn more about our research, reports, and programs? Use your lunch break to visit the Center’s Open House to meet CSEP staff and member leaders, learn about programs including the Health Leaders Network, and get copies of new publications.

For more information: [email protected]

Coastal Forum

1:30 pm – 2:30 pm

Open to all attendees

On-site: Metro Toronto Convention Centre

The Coastal Forum is a ULI member-initiated project to bring together leaders in real estate, land use and climate resilience to share best practices for coastal development. The Forum offers a dialogue-based setting to analyze trends and share tools and resources related to waterfront development.

For more information: [email protected]

Accelerating to Net Zero at the District Scale: Climate Action and Resilience in Toronto

2:30 pm – 3:30 pm

Open to all attendees

On-site: Metro Toronto Convention Centre

As home to some of the world’s largest banks, pension funds, and insurance companies, Toronto is a leader in delivering well-designed projects built for the long term. Recent projects, including renovations, are going above and beyond LEED Platinum ratings, delivering some of the greenest and most high-tech buildings in North America. This session discusses real-world solutions in Toronto that help mitigate climate impacts, providing new net-zero-energy buildings and districts that improve regional resilience to climate risks. This session will showcase some recent projects and discuss the deep-lake-water cooling system using renewable cold water from the bottom of Lake Ontario to cool/heat Toronto’s downtown core.

For more information: [email protected]

District Council Task Forces for Health and Social Equity

2:30 pm – 4:30 pm

By Invitation Only

On-site: Metro Toronto Convention Centre

ULI Arizona, Chicago, Sacramento and Tampa Bay are leading special task forces to identify local policy and regulatory barriers to healthier and more equitable places and provide recommendations for local policy shifts and reforms. At this gathering, participating task force members will caucus about local progress and share strategies and solutions. By invitation only.

For more information: [email protected]

The Climate-Savvy Investor: Assessing Resilience in U.S. Markets

4:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Open to All Attendees

On-site: Metro Toronto Convention Centre

Global real estate is increasingly recognizing both the short- and long-term threat posed by climate change, but there is no consensus yet on how to price climate risk into real estate investment decisions and how to assess markets for climate resilience and vulnerability. The panel will look at how real estate investors can assess and price climate risk in different markets, considering the findings and emerging best practices profiled in a new ULI/Heitman report. The panel will also explore best practices in cities’ efforts to mitigate climate risk, how the funding methods for these projects could affect the real estate sector, and how cities are using economic modeling to determine the business case for resilience.

For more information: [email protected]

Thursday, May 14, 2020

Unlocking the Power of Parks: How New Approaches Are Creating Vibrant Parks and Open Spaces

1:30 pm – 2:30 pm

Open to all attendees

On-site: Metro Toronto Convention Centre

Successful parks require innovations like creative approaches to partnerships and new thinking about existing places, including outmoded infrastructure such as abandoned rail lines, parking lots, and highway underpasses. This session will examine new approaches to unlocking the power of parks in communities across the United States and Canada, and how to apply lessons learned to other projects and developments. This session will explore insights from two new ULI reports and case studies from Toronto and beyond that illustrate how real estate leaders are working together with public, nonprofit, and philanthropic partners to build and sustain high-quality parks that enhance both real estate value and community health.

For more information: [email protected]

Building Better: New Opportunities in Sustainable Construction

3:00 pm – 4:00 pm

Open to all attendees

On-site: Metro Toronto Convention Centre

Too often, sustainability is considered only during building operations, however decisions made during the design and construction phase can have a huge impact on a building’s environmental footprint. A recent focus on carbon emitted by materials and during construction has sent the real estate industry looking for innovative solutions. New materials and technologies, from mass timber to modular construction to the new Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator (EC3) software tool are already being implemented by leading real estate developers. These tools help the real estate industry be more sustainable while also solving traditional problems during construction, including labor costs, building time, and construction waste. Invited speakers include developers from Alexandria Real Estate, Skanska, and EllisDon who will speak to their experiences pushing the envelope on sustainable development and construction. ULI Greenprint will share recent thought leadership on the business case for reducing carbon in development.

For more information: [email protected]