ULI’s 2015 Fall Meeting, October 5-8 in San Francisco, featured a number of events focused on health and the built environment.
 

Monday, October 5

Building Healthy Places Interest Forum

(by invitation only)
Port of San Francisco, Pier 1
12:30 – 5:00 p.m.
The second Building Healthy Places Interest Forum was held in conjunction with Fall Meeting in San Francisco. This forum brought together leaders in health, wellness, and real estate to discuss what they are doing, planning, and observing in the field. These forums are designed to be content-heavy, interactive discussions and exchange.

Tuesday, October 6

Healthy Corridors Forum

(by invitation only)
Moscone Center
7:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
At this Forum, leaders from the Healthy Corridors: A New Life for Urban and Suburban Arterials project gathered for a second time to exchange information about opportunities to reinvent corridors in healthier ways and discuss progress in the project’s four demonstration corridors in Boise, Nashville, Los Angeles, and Denver. This project is supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Colorado Health Foundation.

General Session: ULI’s Changing World Speaker Series – Sustainability, Resilience and Health

Moscone Center
1:15 – 2:15 p.m.
Sustainability, resilience and health are global challenges of a magnitude requiring deep understanding and knowledge in order to shape and inform meaningful solutions. Two provocateurs revealed their efforts to eliminate these challenges and their dedication to make the world a more sustainable, resilient and healthier place. This session featured the president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, MD.

Concurrent Session: ULI’s Changing World Speaker Series – Sustainability, Resilience and Health – Meet the Visionaries Q&A Session

Moscone Center
2:20 – 2:40 p.m.
Join us as each speaker from the Sustainability, Resilience and Health session answers your questions and dives a bit deeper into how their ideas apply to your world.

Wednesday, October 7

Concurrent Session: From Dismal to Great: How Underperforming Commercial Corridors are Crafting a Healthier, Better Connected Future

Moscone Center
9:30 – 10:45 a.m.
Nearly every community in the country is home to an underperforming commercial corridor. Dismal, dirty, and disconnected, these places may yet represent the last great smart growth and infill opportunity. How can urban and suburban arterials be re-envisioned as healthy places, with more housing, better transportation options, appealing land use patterns, and reinvigorated retail centers? How can corridors work smarter to attract tenants and enhance walkability? This panel featured key participants and takeaways from ULI’s ongoing focus on healthy corridors.

Concurrent Session: Food Glorious Food: The Growing Power of Food in Cities and Real Estate Projects

Moscone Center
11:00 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.
Food innovation is emerging as a key differentiator in innovative real estate projects around the country. From rooftop gardens supplying food to adjacent restaurants, to edible landscaping, to industrial places that are hosting breweries, food has the potential to transform marginal and underused spaces in powerful ways. How can innovative approaches to food drive deliver healthier and more sustainable outcomes? Explore trends in urban agriculture and the role of food as placemaking and revitalization strategy.

Concurrent Session: Changing Tenant Demands and the New Shape of Office Buildings

Moscone Center
3:00 – 4:15 p.m.
The increasing proliferation of technology, innovation, and the importance of collaboration in the workplace has brought about a dramatic transformation of today’s office environments. Across the globe businesses of all sizes are experimenting with new ways of fostering collaboration, nurturing creativity, and attracting talent by developing innovative workplace designs that emphasize flexibility, community, and communication that is achieved in more densely populated work spaces. Employees’ desire to incorporate daily exercise to offset the effects of sitting all day has resulted in new strategies for enlivening work areas, and promoting interaction among employees and the workspace community at large. Companies are also recognizing the importance of and capitalizing on, the inherent value of amenity-rich neighborhoods that are transit friendly, walkable, and offer a broad range of retail and recreational services. This session showcased how leading edge companies, developers, and designers are creating great work places that have transformed the way we work.

Concurrent Session: The Value of Accessing Cultural Assets through Urban Open Space

Moscone Center
3:00 – 4:15 p.m.
Cultural initiatives and institutions play a critical role in activating community engagement and neighborhood investment. Urban open space as a cultural asset on its own, and through its association with cultural organizations, provides a valuable set of tools for urban development. This session explored the link between these spaces and culture-oriented initiatives as a means to generate successful projects.

Concurrent Session: Demographic Reality Check

Moscone Center
3:00 – 4:15 p.m.
Understanding changing populations and the related shifts in demand for housing products and features is essential to prepare for the coming era of real estate. While Millennials and their desires are in the news often these days, the aging of the Baby Boomers and Gen X will also have dramatic impact on our communities. Come hear what the experts are saying about the latest projections of population growth and demographic shifts, and hear the results of new ULI consumer surveys for America as a whole and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Thursday, October 8

Concurrent Session: Master Planned Community Success Factors

Moscone Center
9:00 – 10:15 a.m.
Explore the dynamics of successful master planned community development, as well as the lessons learned from conception, launch and execution of MPCs located in disparate housing markets. Hear “real deal, real numbers” examples of communities that either opened recently or are at later stages of build-out, and what’s different and new. This interactive conversation will explore how the most creative MPC developers in the country are currently approaching community building under a variety of different housing market conditions. You won’t want to miss this discussion of the latest thinking on MPC land acquisition and sales, infrastructure funding, and lifestyle building and marketing.

Concurrent Session: Transbay Transit Center District: Transforming Downtown San Francisco through Innovative Public Private Partnerships

Moscone Center
1:00 – 2:30 p.m.
The Transbay Transit Center is transforming downtown San Francisco by creating an architecturally inspiring transit hub in the heart of a vibrant new neighborhood. Previously dominated by underutilized properties and an abandoned freeway, the surrounding Transit Center District is the site of a comprehensive planning and redevelopment effort to create a dense, walkable employment center that also features housing at all levels of affordability, active retail and abundant public open space. The substantial public infrastructure investment needed to undertake this project is being funded through a complex and innovative mix of public and private sources, including land sales, developer contributions, tiered impact fees, and special taxes. The major rezoning of properties throughout the district, along with its significant amenities, has created substantial value and generated enthusiastic developer response, including the construction of the tallest high-rise west of Chicago. This panel discussed the redevelopment challenges that were overcome and forward thinking strategies that have created this new “Grand Central of the West” and its adjacent neighborhood.

Concurrent Session: Mixed Use: Building in Flexibility in a Chaotic Environment

Moscone Center
2:45 – 4:00 p.m.
The development of mixed-use and multi-use infill projects is growing as more people are drawn to urban places where they can live, work and play.  By incorporating flexibility and diversity into their projects, innovative developers and investors are creating spaces that are active throughout the day, more resilient to rapidly changing market trends, and draw a diverse range of people. These exciting projects require creativity and complex planning, zoning, design, operations and communication coordination. Come hear the early success stories and challenges presented by several ambitious projects aiming to create a sense of place and strike a balance between deliberate and organic growth in an unpredictable world.