Urban Land
October 2008
Major urban redevelopment efforts are taking place around the world, many completed through unique public/private partnerships that are reviving and expanding central business districts in the United States and Australia, historical industrial cities in Europe, and knowledge hubs in Asia.
Feature Article
Houston’s Downtown Transformation
by
Mike Sheridan
More than $4 billion in public and private projects have transformed the central business district of America’s fourth-largest city.
View full story >>
In This Issue
- A New Future
Major urban redevelopment efforts have been underway in many of Europe’s historical industrial cities. - Brownfield Boons
Ten developments show how brownfield sites can bring economic, social, and environmental benefits to their communities. - Capital Crunch
Conservative loan-to-value ratios and debt-service-coverage ratios are back in vogue. - Capital Transformations
The U.S. financial crisis has spread around the globe. Rate cuts are failing to reign in fallen stock indices, and credit markets are seizing up around the world. Several European countries and Japan already are in recession. London has partially nationalized many of the world’s largest banks and ordered others to be liquidated. China is expected to face a sharp slowdown. The International Monetary Fund foresees the United States will enter a recession this year; and almost everywhere unemployment is predicted to soar. - Containing Prince Rupert
Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada, has staked its future on being the West Coast of North America’s next great container port. - Crossing the Rubican
The current housing market crash, the continued illiquidity of mortgage-backed securities with all the financial instruments built on top of them, and the growing distrust—especially in foreign markets—in the ability of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to withstand continued losses, meant that the federal government would have to use its newly created powers to back them sooner or later and in one way or another. - Daniel H. Burnham: The American City as Bridge between Past and Future
An architect, planner, visionary, and consummate project manager, Daniel H. Burnham arguably influenced American culture more widely and subtly than any other urban designer. - Emerging Trends in Real Estate in 2009
Against what appears as growing pessimism and the likelihood of “no quick fix” in 2009 as a weakening economy takes its toll on real estate fundamentals, there are some pinpoints of light and opportunities. - Globalization Repercussions
It is as easy to purchase a glass of Australian wine in St. Petersburg, Russia (as we learned at the ULI Europe Retreat this past September), as it is in New York. Lifestyles around the world continue to converge. This commonality of goods and services is an indication of the underlying global ties of the worldwide economy. - Housing and the Tides of Urban Regeneration
Collapsing housing prices, declining home sales, and tight credit have brought a decade of central-city and inner-city growth to a standstill. Why has this happened? What is the future of urban regeneration? - Housing Societies in Amsterdam and Vienna Address Workforce Housing
Housing societies—private nonprofit corporations created to provide affordable housing—are big businesses in Europe, operating with little government subsidy. - Immigrant Housing in Europe
Immigration constitutes one of the main social and demographic trends affecting the provision of social housing in Europe today. Demand still outstrips supply—and the gap continues to widen as migration grows. - Las Vegas Brownfield Readied for Green Revitalization
Union Park in downtown Las Vegas, one of the most ambitious brownfield redevelopment projects in the country, aims to convert more than 61 acres (25 ha) of a former rail yard and maintenance facility into a green urban destination complete with a towering skyline. The estimated $6 billion project is the only project in Nevada accepted into the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND) national pilot program. - Las Vegas Has Largest LEED-Certified Building in the World
The Palazzo Resort Hotel Casino—with 8.3 million square feet (770,000 sq m) of space—is the largest building in the world certified under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) building rating system. The hotel—the first in Las Vegas to gain LEED certification—has 3,066 guest suites in a 50-story tower. Its podium atrium area includes more than 60 luxury shops, restaurants, nightclubs and bars, the first Lamborghini dealership on the Las Vegas strip, and a 1,700-seat theater for touring Broadway shows. An eight-story underground garage has 4,400 parking spaces. The cost of the project was $1.9 billion. - Last Harvest: From Cornfield to New Town
Professional books are rarely page-turners. They sacrifice plot and character for theory and data. Yet, there is a compelling story between the covers of Last Harvest, a book by design guru Witold ˇRybczynski, a professor of urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania, that includes personal interviews and on-site observations, supplemented by far-reaching literature citations. - Less Is More
Architects, designers, and developers are striving to build a better multifamily product. - Lizanne Galbreath: Continuing the Family Legacy
Lizanne Galbreath grew up in a family in which real estate was “in the blood” and midwestern values were respected. - Melbourne Reborn
Melbourne, Australia’s city center has come to life over the past 20 years and is now burgeoning with new public parks, squares, and art; improved streetscapes; and more downtown housing. - Must Read: Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success
A compelling overview of Dubai is offered in Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success by author Christopher M. Davidson, a fellow of the Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at Durham University in England, and former assistant professor of political science at Shaikh Zayed University, where he lectured at the Abu Dhabi and Dubai campuses. He provides an insightful examination of Dubai’s history, politics, and economy, its rapid growth and diversification, and the considerable problems it faces today. - New Retail Developments Open in Bristol and Leicester
The $1.1 billion (£600 million) Cabot Circus development in the center of Bristol, England, a retail-led project that also includes residential, hotel, university student housing, office, and leisure elements, opened late last month. The 1.5 million-square-foot (140,000-sq-m) mixed-use development has 1 million square feet (93,000 sq m) of shopping and leisure space, 161,500 square feet (15,000 sq m) of offices, 224 apartments, a hotel, new pedestrian streets, and public squares. - New Sustainable Buildings in the Asia Pacific on the Rise
Across the Asia Pacific region, new energy-efficient commercial and residential buildings are being commissioned. Architects, local and global, and investors are addressing the challenges initially driven by climate change, and now, also driven by rapidly increasing utility prices for heating, cooling, and lighting. - On the Block
A unique public/private partnership has completed the redevelopment of a city block in downtown Madison, Wisconsin, that incorporates a number of historic and contemporary office buildings with interconnected floor plates. - Oslo’s Fjord City
After controversy forced a redesign, an ambitious harbor redevelopment plan is proceeding in Norway’s capital city. - Q&A with Bruce Katz
The vice president and founding director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., discusses a range of ideas, including an overhaul of federal policy to improve cities. - Restoration of Creek Revitalizes Tournament Golf Course
More than two centuries ago, miners dug for gold along Rock Run Creek in Potomac, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C., dumping their leftover metal filings in the creek as they worked. Farmers later followed suit, milling their wheat and corn, and washing the residue into the waterway. - Reurbanizing the New West
Large-scale redevelopments in western U.S. cities combine outdoor life, cultural assets, and—in the best cases—innovative design. - San Francisco Moves on Up to the Waterfront
San Francisco has a long and storied history as a port city, from the early days of anchorage at Yerba Buena to the explosive waterfront growth experienced during the Gold Rush and the city’s role as a military logistics center during World War II. As recently as the 1950s, San Francisco was viewed as the premier cargo port on the West Coast, and its waterfront, like those of Vancouver, Boston, and many other cities, became littered with industrial buildings. Since the port’s heyday more than a half century ago, it has been overtaken by Oakland, Los Angeles, and Long Beach, largely because those ports adapted to the rise of container shipping. - Seawater Communities
A profitable new frontier for everything connected with the real estate industry may be seawater villages, towns, and cities. - Seeking Solutions for the Affordable Housing Crisis
Despite the appeal of modern, new buildings, acquisition and rehabilitation of existing real estate constitute the most cost-effective approach to providing the largest number of low-income households with safe and decent housing. - Smart Cities: Seattle
Seattle, Washington, has been proactive in venturing out to other cities in an organized exploration of best practices and benchmarking to bring good ideas back home. - Solar Power Along the Highway
A public/private partnership will build a solar photovoltaic array on a freeway near Portland, Oregon, to generate power for the state’s transportation department. - Strategic Transformation
A new research and development-centered, mixed-use project with business, residential, retail, restaurant, civic and cultural, education, and institutional components may be the kind of catalyst needed to transform Singapore into a knowledge-based economy. - Sustainable Insides
Commercial and residential interiors are reflecting the growing awareness of green priorities. - The 20 Cities of 2020
Ten large cities from around the world have been named as global sustainability centers of 2020 by the New York-based think tank Ethisphere Institute, which provides research and sharing of best practices in ethics, compliance, and corporate governance. Another ten mid-sized cities have been recognized as leading the way to sustainability. All 20 are noted for being environmentally and economically sustainable, for providing their citizens with a health quality of life, and for currently implementing sustainability plans. - The Blue Sky Always Wins
In the world of real estate, we should not lose sight of underlying reasons for confidence. - The City in 2050: Creating Blueprints for Change—ULI Explores Future Urban Design and Development with Visionary Exhibit
An urban laboratory that explores factors shaping the future design and development of cities worldwide—including emerging trends for alternative energy use, new technology affecting housing, and new approaches to achieve economic, social, and environmental sustainability—debuts at the Urban Land Institute’s annual fall meeting and expo, October 27-30 at the Miami Beach Convention Center in Miami Beach, Florida. - The Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution and What It Means for the World
“Since the 1980s, China has built more skyscrapers; more office buildings; more shopping malls and hotels; more housing estates and gated communities; . . . more golf courses and resorts and theme parks than any nation on earth—indeed, than probably all other nations combined.” So writes Thomas J. Campanella, associate professor of urban planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in The Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution and What It Means for the World. The author was first exposed to post-Maoist China as a graduate student at a Massachusetts Institute of Technology–Tsinghua University urban design studio in 1992. - The Endless City
It is a daunting task to try to review a book with over 500 pages; nearly 2,000 illustrations, photos, charts, and other elements; a weight approaching ten pounds; and more information than exists in most people’s entire personal libraries. Even the cover cites a dozen statistics that in and of themselves could be the subject of intense debates, thought-provoking presentations, and insightful books. But the largest and most prominent of those cover statistics gets to the heart of the subject matter inside: 10 percent of the world population lived in cities in 1900, 50 percent was living in cities in 2007, and 75 percent will be living in cities in 2050. - The Green Quotient: Q&A with Frances Beinecke
“We need new policies in the building arena so that we build green, reduce the demands on our power sector. . . and create incentives to green up our existing buildings.” - The Jamaica Plan
The challenge for a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens in fulfilling its potential as a vibrant, dense, and transit-rich urban center is to persuade potential capital investors to take the risk of being pioneers. - The Myth Breaker: Bart Harvey and Enterprise
Bart Harvey and Enterprise, the 2008 winners of the ULI J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development, have helped dispel some myths about affordable housing. - The Tide Turns for Beacon’s Waterfront
On a Sunday in early August, 200 residents of Beacon, New York, and the surrounding Hudson Valley gathered at the riverfront, just on the other side of the former industrial city’s Metro-North commuter train station. The morning’s throng—there to watch an equal number of swimmers participating in the fifth annual Great Newburgh to Beacon Hudson River Swim—overwhelmed the weekly farmers market pitched between the station and the public dock. - The Undermining of American Prosperity
The U.S federal government is inadvertently hampering metropolitan prosperity by acting conversely to what is needed. A continued downward trend will threaten America’s prosperity and its standing as a world leader in innovative science and technology. - Town Makers “See the Future” in North America’s Pacific Northwest
Nearly 40 urban planners, city leaders, consultants, educators, community advocates, and journalists from four countries visited communities in the Pacific Northwest in August to study best practices in town making. The participants, from the United States, Taiwan, New Zealand, and Mexico, quizzed local leaders in communities near Seattle and Tacoma, Washington, and Vancouver, British Columbia, to learn how the towns built public support for and implemented elements of place making and smart growth such as mixed-use and compact developments, walkable communities, “road diets,” affordable housing, redevelopment and infill construction, and increased public space. - Transforming Shorelines in Time for an Ocean Race
The round-the-world Volvo Ocean Race, the world’s biggest sailing event for professional race crews, lasts nine months and touches nearly a dozen port cities on five continents in both hemispheres. The 2008–2009 race, which began on October 4, will span more than 37,000 nautical miles and traverse the world by touching 11 port cities—Alicante, Spain; Cape Town, South Africa; Kochi, India; Singapore; Qingdao, China; Rio de Janeiro; Boston, Massachusetts; Galway, Ireland; Goteborg and Stockholm, Sweden; and St. Petersburg, Russia. - Urban Land Cover October 2008
- Urban Land Multifamily Trends Cover October 2008
- Urban Land Multifamily Trends Table of Contents October 2008
- Urban Land Table of Contents October 2008
- Urban Suburbia
Over the last decade, an array of innovative infill projects in existing downtowns has lured market segments back to the city. This resurgent interest in urban lifestyle environments has also sparked a parallel trend: large-scale, new urbanist communities that seek to bring “downtown living” to the suburbs. - Valuing LA’s River
Reinvesting in the Los Angeles River has involved a more holistic commitment to its green infrastructure. - Views from the Waterfront
A 270-acre (109-ha) plot of land along the Monongahela River in Homestead, Pennsylvania, has been transformed into a mixed-use regional destination and has reinvented what had become a virtually abandoned brownfield site. - Water Views: Europe
Europe is refurbishing and redeveloping decaying waterfront sites that will extend city centers, accommodate increased activity, and create a new identity in a changing regional and global economy. - Water Views: North Africa
North Africa’s seaboard megaprojects are staking out new positions in international commerce and tourism. - Waterfront Destinations
Through proper planning and design, once-languishing waterfronts are now being transformed into thriving mixed-use destinations. - What Carbon Studies Tell Us—So Far
The emerging links between lower carbon emissions and denser development are likely to spur more attention from researchers and policy makers alike.