The ULI Hines Student Competition—now entering  its 18th year—offers graduate students the opportunity to form their own multidisciplinary teams and engage in a challenging exercise in responsible land use. Teams comprising of five students in at least three disciplines have two weeks to devise a development program for a real, large-scale site full of challenges and opportunities in a North American city. Teams provide graphic boards and narratives of their proposals including designs and market-feasible financial data for the site.

This is an ideas competition; there is no expectation that any of the submitted schemes will be applied to the site. The winning team receives $50,000 and the finalist teams receive $10,000 each. One representative from each of the four finalist teams gets an all-expenses-paid site tour in the selected competition city prior to the final presentation. All participating finalist students attend the all-expenses-paid final presentation in the host city where the jury selects the winning project.

The ULI Hines Student Competition is part of the Institute’s ongoing effort to raise interest among young people in creating better communities, improving development patterns, and increasing awareness of the need for multidisciplinary solutions to development and design challenges.

The Hines Student Competition was created with a generous endowment from longtime ULI leader Gerald Hines, founder of the Hines real estate organization.