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University Connections Student Programming at Fall Meeting
ULI Fall Meeting Programming for Students, Faculty, and Program Directors
Not-So-Secret Summary: Sustainability Events at the 2022 ULI Fall Meeting
August 30, 2022
The 2022 ULI Fall Meeting was held in October 2022 in Dallas, Texas. This page is an archive of events at the meeting that were hosted, supported, or encouraged by the ULI Randall Lewis Center for Sustainability in Real Estate. Included are session recordings (if available), report links, and other resources related to activities focused on health and wellness, parks and open space, social justice, climate mitigation and adaptation, building performance, and resilience.
Monday, October 24, 2022
Randall Lewis/Building Healthy Places Forum
8:30am – 4:30pm CT | Forum — Registration Required — The fifteenth in the series of the Building Healthy Places Forums in Dallas will explore opportunities to build with nature, despite growing threats posed by wildfires, extreme heat, and a changing climate. This forum, generously supported by ULI Foundation Governor Randall Lewis, brings together leaders in health and real estate to discuss what they are doing, planning, and observing in the field. The forum is organized in collaboration with ULI member leaders and will focus on sharing information about Texas-based projects at the intersection of health and the built environment. The forum is open to all ULI members who are attending Fall Meeting. If you are interested in attending, please email us at [email protected].
ULI Net Zero Imperative Cohort Dinner
7:00 – 9:30pm CT | Dinner — Invitation Required — NZI Cohort Members are invited to join an off-site dinner meetup to network and connect with fellow participants during the conference. Location to be shared in separate invitation.
Tuesday, October 25, 2022
Greenprint Members Only Breakfast
8:00 – 9:30am CT | Breakfast Meeting — Invitation Required — ULI Greenprint Real Estate Members are invited to join an off-site brunch meetup to network and connect with fellow ESG leaders during the conference. Location to be shared in a separate invitation.
The Coastal Forum
8:00 – 12:00pm CT | Forum — Registration Required — ULI’s Coastal Forum seeks to provide an opportunity for members to meet and build a network with peers of different professional backgrounds involved in coastal development and/or resilience. This year, join fellow ULI members for important discussion around this year’s theme: “The Ike Dike and other interventions: understanding the evolving challenges alongside the partnerships, ambitious financing mechanisms, and design solutions that are paving the way for resilient coastal communities across the lone star state.” Please register via the Fall Meeting link or email [email protected]
Click here to view the Coastal Forum Recap page.
Click here to view the Resource Library.
ESG Innovators in Real Estate
11:30 – 12:30pm CT | Concurrent Session — Join the ULI Greenprint Center for Building Performance for a presentation with three Greenprint Innovation Partners (BlackBear Energy, Nova Group GBC, and WoodWorks,) highlighting next generation building technologies that Greenprint members are leveraging to enhance sustainability across their portfolios.
ULI Research Roundtable: Healthy and Sustainable Building Materials
11:30 – 1:00pm CT | Luncheon/Research Session — Developers and investors are increasingly prioritizing human health and sustainability when selecting building materials. While the world of material health is rapidly expanding, development teams still face barriers when selecting and integrating healthy materials in their projects. Join for lunch and an interactive roundtable discussion with fellow industry leaders on this important topic. The luncheon will begin with a short presentation of ULI’s initial research findings, followed by facilitated roundtable discussions focused on best practices, common barriers, and tips for navigating the ecosystem of product declarations, certifications, and other resources. Please email [email protected] if you are interested in attending.
How to Choose, Use, and Better Understand Climate Risk Analytics
12:30 – 1:00pm CT | Member Engagement — Rising sea levels and the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events such as wildfires, hurricanes, and excessive heat illustrate the consequences of a changing climate. How should institutional real estate managers evaluate current and future physical risk and integrate it into investment decisions? While numerous qualified physical risk assessment providers exist in the marketplace, they use different methodologies, report their findings uniquely, and often use different assumptions in creating their findings. As part of the long-term commitment to addressing climate change and physical risk, ULI partnered with global real estate investment management firm, LaSalle Investment Management, to examine and report on physical climate risk assessment in How to Choose, Use, and Better Understand Climate Risk Analytics. The report analyzes the current state of the climate risk analytics market and provides guidance for the real estate industry to evaluate physical risk data analytics products. Attendees will gain insights into the complex nature of assessing physical climate risk and will be offered a framework for better integrating climate risk assessments into the investment process.
Click here to access the report.
For What It’s Worth: Addressing Valuation Challenges in Communities of Color
1:00 – 2:00pm CT | Member Engagement — Across the United States, valuations for property in Black communities and communities of color are artificially low. Valuation challenges have multiple sources, including but not limited to bias in the appraisal process and industry and bank underwriting standards. The resulting economic losses have been estimated to exceed $450 billion, with results including lost productivity, the inability to form new businesses, depressed generational wealth, and exacerbated health inequities. In this session, panelists will explore the causes and consequences of property valuation depression, recent federal government actions, the role of the real estate industry, and what steps are being taken to ensure that property valuation challenges don’t hold back the economic potential of BIPOC communities.
Click here to view the session recording.
Future proofing: How climate tech can reduce risk to assets
2:00 – 3:00pm CT | Special Program —Value-at-risk from extreme weather events is at an all-time global high, with loss estimates from climate change-driven natural disasters reaching a half trillion per year since 2020. To price and mitigate this risk, real estate professionals can harness the power of technology. Join this session to hear how leading real estate professionals are using climate risk software to translate climate science into stronger investment returns.
Real Estate and Investment Resilience Journey
2:30 – 3:30pm CT | Concurrent Session — Over the past several years, real estate owners, asset managers, and developers have all been charting their own course toward defining what resilience means for their organizations and assets. Every company is at a different stage of their resilience journey and is working to integrate resilience throughout their business and operational decisions. This session will bring together three prominent real estate and investment groups with global and national portfolios of assets to talk about how they have been making strides toward a resilient future for their assets and operations. Specifically, Invesco will provide the perspective of how they have been integrating risk and resilience into their due diligence decisions. Lendlease will discuss how they think about resilience within new construction, and Equity Residential will provide insight into what it means to understand the vulnerabilities of its existing buildings and how they are making capital planning and maintenance decisions to improve the resilience of those assets. Arup will bring up to three of our developer clients to the table to discuss their paths to resilient design and development.
Impact of Creative Placemaking Recommendations
4:00 – 5:00pm CT | Concurrent Session — ULI Advisory Services has seen a growing demand for creative placemaking (CPM) expertise on Advisory Services panels (ASPs). In recent years, for example, nearly half of ASPs have included recommendations that leverage CPM in solutions to panel challenges. Creative placemaking—an innovation in placemaking that brings art and culture, in tandem with great design at the start of real estate development projects—can be employed across the built environment in solutions ranging from climate resilience and brownfield management to adaptive re-use and new development mixed use. What has been the impact of implemented creative placemaking panel recommendations? Advisory Services is producing a report aimed at addressing this question (to be released at Fall Meeting 2022). The report features six panels conducted within the last five years and reveals remarkable findings from post panel research about how CPM contributed to solving land use challenges, while also promoting DEI. Panelists representing Miami Beach, Florida; Downtown South, Raleigh, North Carolina; Charity Hospital, New Orleans; Market Street, Nashville, Tennessee; and St. Croix, Virgin Islands, share their insights. The report will be available for session attendees.
Click here to view the session recording.
How the SEC’s Green Disclosure Requirement Could Fast-Track the Decarbonizing of Cities
4:00 – 5:00pm CT | Concurrent Session — For years, the battle for decarbonizing the built environment has primarily focused on building codes, local laws, and taxes to incentivize the real estate industry to build sustainable building stock. However, the growing competitiveness for green buildings and ESG products has shifted investment and insurance markets, creating more demand for products that provide not only social impact but also social value. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) regulation of information disclosure about climate-related risks for public companies could be the market accelerant that sustainability proponents have always wanted for real estate. The impact could mean harmony to an industry in need of standardized quantitative metrics on climate risks for both investors and tenants who demand buildings to align with their corporation’s ESG goals. The immediate scramble from both AEC and CRE professionals for short-term benefits have the potential to lay the foundation for long-term lasting impact. This panel of capital markets, design, and development experts will discuss how the new SEC rule will accelerate a sustainability market and increase the demand for high-performance buildings. Please join moderator Billy Grayson of ULI as well as panelists Valerie Wieman (Partner, PwC), Christine Robinson (Partner, Sustainability & ESG, Deloitte), and Mary K. Ludgin (Senior Managing Director and Director of Global Investment Research, Heitman).
Click here to view the session recording.
Wednesday, October 26, 2022
Owner/End User Sustainability Forum
9:00 – 3:30pm CT | Offsite Convening — Invitation Required — Building owners face increasing pressure to reduce the emissions from their leased spaces, which can account for more than half of a building’s emissions. However, owners have little to no control over that energy consumption. Many end users have their own climate goals and want to partner with owners to improve building performance or their corporate real estate leased space, but there are barriers that hinder this cooperation. This convening will bring together real estate owners and corporate end users to share case studies of owners and end users that have improved building sustainability together and will conclude with a deep dive facilitated discussion.
Water Wise: Strategies for Drought-Resilient Development
9:30 – 10:00am CT | Member Engagement — The world is facing unprecedented levels of drought. The frequency, intensity, and duration of droughts are increasing, leading to a myriad of issues, including regional wildfires, and this pattern is expected to continue with climate change. The ULI Urban Resilience program’s latest report, “Water Wise: Strategies for Drought-Resilient Development” introduces the challenges associated with drought and limited freshwater availability and provides best practices for real estate and land use professionals to address them. This session will share key takeaways from the report, including best practices for drought-resilient development, and will provide an opportunity for Q&A with the lead author of the report.
Click here to access the report.
Multigenerational Living: Enhancing Housing and Neighborhoods to Meet Evolving Human Needs
10:30 – 11:30am CT | Concurrent Session — This panel will discuss the key takeaways from the 2022 Shaw Symposium on Urban Community Issues, which will be published in an accompanying report. The ULI Shaw Symposium is an annual forum endowed by former ULI Chairman Charles “Charlie” H. Shaw that brings together a selection of leading national (or international) experts and practitioners to address the challenges and opportunities of urban neighborhoods. Bringing together international perspectives, the 2022 Shaw Forum will focus on opportunities for and barriers to creating homes and neighborhoods that meet American families’ evolving, multigenerational housing needs. Increasingly, families are looking for housing—and neighborhoods—that are built for or can easily adapt to comfortably accommodate multiple generations and a variety of abilities as family needs change over time.
Click here to view the session recording.
Financing Decarbonization: The Great Real Estate Investment Opportunity of the Decade?
1:00 – 2:00pm CT | Concurrent Session — Over the past year, tremendous momentum has been building for net zero real estate: global governments have set deadlines for new and existing buildings to achieve net zero, global tenants have united in their commitments to decarbonize their operations, and global capital providers have committed more than $15 trillion in investment to decarbonize our economy. Now is a great time to invest in net zero real estate. This panel will share their experiences in financing net zero buildings, and in building low- and lower-carbon real estate funds. Net zero projects and funds are unlocking new sources of capital—often with better rates and terms—but building toward net zero also presents new challenges for these projects.
Click here to view the session recording.
Mapping ESG: A Landscape Review of Certifications, Reporting Frameworks, and Practices
2:30 – 3:30pm CT | Concurrent Session — ULI, INREV, and UN PRI have jointly been working on a report aimed at helping navigate the landscape of tools, regulations, certifications, reporting frameworks, and requirements needed to assess the ESG of buildings, with a rapidly increasing focus on net zero carbon emissions beyond asset-level energy efficiency. The resulting landscape review provides clarity and transparency, and helps industry players understand how the most used reporting frameworks and certifications relate to the latest regulatory requirements. In this session, senior industry players will discuss: the results of the report and how they apply to their business, how to assess which frameworks best align with their changing strategic objectives, how to select different reporting frameworks to ensure streamlined and consistent data collection, and how to avoid the creation of bespoke reporting requirements.
Champions of Change: Leading the Future of Real Estate Development
2:30 – 3:30pm CT | Concurrent Session — To lead the future of real estate development, we have to know our past. In this session, three renowned local and national industry leaders will share how they have moved from understanding their local context to building places that repair past injustices while celebrating communities. The speakers will use the newly released ULI Building Healthy Places report 10 Principles for Embedding Racial Equity in Real Estate Development as a lens to discuss projects that are rooted in local history. Join this session to gain insights into how diverse voices and experiences can inform the future of development and how you can champion the change necessary to make our communities equitable and inclusive.
Click here to view the session recording.
An Action Agenda for Equitable Change: A Houston Case Study
3:30 – 4:00pm CT | Member Engagement — Understanding the past is the first step toward advancing more equitable futures for neighborhoods on the front lines of gentrification. As a member of ULI’s District Council Partnerships for Health Equity cohort, ULI Houston is co-creating an action agenda for ULI members and other stakeholders to drive healthier and more equitable outcomes for Settegast, a neighborhood in northeast Houston. The Houston team convened local leaders, hosted community workshops, hired resident ambassadors, and conducted a series of listening sessions and focus groups to understand the health and socioeconomic impacts of past and ongoing discriminatory practices and policies.
Lewis Center/GreenGeneration Cocktail Reception
9:00 – 11:00pm CT | Cocktail Hour — Invitation Required — The Randall Lewis Center for Sustainability and GreenGeneration invite you to join us for evening cocktails at the Joule Hotel. A separate invitation will be sent out – please RSVP and email [email protected] if you are interested in attending and did not receive the invitation.
Thursday, October 27, 2022
Nature-Positive and Net Zero: The Intersection of Real Estate, Climate Mitigation, and Biodiversity
10:00 – 10:30am CT | Member Engagement — Real estate has a large impact on land use both within and outside urban environments but has not often considered biodiversity as part of its business or climate strategy. However, restoring natural systems can provide up to 30 percent of necessary global emissions reductions. Nature-positive development that manages and restores the natural environment while also supporting essential human services is key to resilient and sustainable real estate, protecting material supply chains, and preserving building value, while also achieving ambitious net zero carbon goals. This panel, featuring ULI and Jacobs research on the intersection of real estate, climate mitigation, and biodiversity, will highlight best practices and case studies from leading building owners and developers.
Click here to access the report.
Demystifying Climate Preparedness: How to Prepare Our Buildings and Cities to Weather Climate Change
10:30 – 11:30am CT | Concurrent Session — Extreme weather events such as heatwaves and severe storms increase the risk of damage to real estate assets in both coastal and inland cities, along with those cities in regions dealing with water and energy challenges. Dallas/Fort Worth and other cities in Texas are expected to grow faster than any other metropolitan region in the country, making resilience efforts even more difficult. Across the United States, commercial property insurance policies are already changing their language, and investors have begun to turn down attractive short-term opportunities that do not account for long-term resilience. According to a recent ULI report, climate change is a disrupter that may trigger a significant shift in real estate demand. The answer is preparing our properties and cities for a climate shock. But what does preparedness look like with our buildings and cities? This panel of resilience experts representing cities and industry will present the specific preparedness framework for how urban planners, investors, and developers can design properties to withstand a new, more turbulent climate.
Click here to view the session recording.
Industry Insights and Trends Sessions: The Responsible Property Investment Council
1:00 – 2:00pm CT | Concurrent Session — Fifty Shades of Green: Today’s Specialty Financing Vehicles for ESG Strategies – to enhance the understanding and application of green financing, including but not limited to C-PACE; and learn about evaluating the effectiveness and impact on underwriting, and increase potential profits and returns, by leveraging non-traditional financing options in the capital stack.
Click here to view the session recording.
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