The 2021 competition runs January 11-25. Kansas City, Missouri and ULI Kansas City will host this year’s competition! Learn more at About the 2021 Competition.

Overview

The ULI Hines Student Competition—entering its 19th year in 2021—offers graduate students the opportunity to form their own multidisciplinary teams and engage in a challenging exercise in responsible land use. Teams of five students pursuing degrees in at least three different disciplines have two weeks to devise a development program for a real, large-scale site in a North American city. Teams provide graphic boards and narratives of their proposals including designs and market-feasible financial data.

This is an ideas competition; there is no expectation that anyone will apply the submitted schemes to the site. The winning team receives $50,000 ($5,000 of it goes to their university) and the finalist teams each receive $10,000. One representative from each of the four finalist teams receives 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. In 2021, it is very possible that both the site tour and the finals will be virtual instead of in-person.

The 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.

Longtime ULI leader Gerald D. Hines, founder of the Hines real estate organization, created the competition with a generous endowment after he received the ULI Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development in 2002.

2021 Competition Dates

Register September 14 – Dec. 4, 2020
Competition Jan. 11 – 25, 2021
Finalists Announced February 2021
Finalists Visit Sites (Tentative) March 19, 2021
Finalist Presentations and Winner Announced April 8, 2021

Join our LinkedIn Group                         Mentor a Team                         Serve on the Jury

#2021ULIHines

Would you like to receive emails about the Competition? Please complete this form. In the body of your message, please indicate if you are a student, faculty member, university administrator, a ULI member or another role:

Competition Mission

The competition strives to encourage cooperation and teamwork – necessary talents in the planning, design, and development of great places – among future real estate professionals and the many allied professions.

About the Competition