Explore how resilience and climate risk affect land use planning and the real estate industry with videos and Urban Land magazine’s coverage of the ULI Building the Resilient City conference in San Francisco.

Hundreds of developers, urban planners, designers and public officials gathered for the conference in early September to share how development can minimize loss and mitigate risk, and how smart development can uncover new opportunities in an uncertain future. Watch the videos and read the articles to learn how resilience and climate change will affect your work and how to develop plans for your community to survive and thrive in the face of adversity.

Learn more about ULI’s Urban Resilience Program at uli.org/resilience.

Conference Videos and Articles

New HUD Competition Will Reward Resilience, Not Just Recovery
A new competition for U.S. federal disaster relief funds will reward forward-thinking proposals that build resilience within communities, rather than those that rebuild in the same places using outdated methods, said HUD’s Harriet Tregoning. Read the article at Urban Land.

Real Estate Industry Needs Better Integration of Resilience
While real estate investors have always paid attention to earthquakes, floods, and other natural disasters that create uncertainty for their portfolios, few speak explicitly about “resilience” as a characteristic they are looking for when underwriting properties, according to a panel of investment leaders. Read the article at Urban Land.

Rebuild by Design: Understanding Risk and Accepting Uncertainty
Marilyn Jordan Taylor, former ULI Chairman, highlights the key themes of Rebuild by Design, a multistage design competition. Read the article at Urban Land.

From Droughts to Floods, Extreme Weather’s Increasing Impact
Far from being a problem for future generations, climate change and its impacts both severe and incremental are confounding communities across the country every single day, according to Rebecca Smyth, the West Coast director of the Coastal Services Center. Read the article at Urban Land.

The Human and Social Dimensions of Resilience
Jonathan Rose, president of the Jonathan Rose Companies, leads a discussion with prominent writer and environmentalist Paul Hawken and renowned landscape architect Peter Calthorpe of Calthorpe Associates. Read the article at Urban Land.

Metrics for Resilience: Defining and Quantifying Success
As cities develop resilience strategies in anticipation of more frequent and severe weather events triggered by climate change, understanding what success looks like across a broad spectrum of indicators will be critical to their efforts, said panelists at the conference. Read the article at Urban Land.

Sustainable Development: Economic Driver and Bulwark against Climate Change
Coastal cities and regions should view private development of waterfront areas as a tool to combat the effects of climate change while also creating jobs, providing much-needed housing, and spurring economic growth, said the chief executive officer of the Bay Area Council, a business advocacy group in the San Francisco Bay area. Read the article at Urban Land.

Building a Resilient Energy Infrastructure
Experts explain the connection between energy infrastructure and urban resilience to adverse events, such as extreme weather.