ULI Fall Meeting Preview

The Urban Land Institute's annual Fall Meeting convenes in Washington DC this week. Milhaus will be there starting tomorrow catching up with friends and colleagues. The headline for this year's meeting is “Capitalize on Emerging Opportunities” and it couldn't me more timely. It was also a nice coincidence to see this weekend a Richard Florida article about retrofitting suburbia in the Wall Street Journal. In it he highlights the many ways that different cities are realizing the visible effects of the built environment during our changing economy. He finishes it with this:

Historically, America's economic growth has hinged on its ability to create new development patterns—economic landscapes that simultaneously expand space and intensify our use of it. The rebound after the panic and long depression of 1873 was based on the transition to an urban-industrial economy organized around great cities and their early streetcar suburbs. Our recovery from the Great Depression saw the rise of massive metropolitan complexes of cities and suburbs. Today the challenge is to remake our suburbs, to turn them into more vibrant, livable, people-friendly communities and, in doing so, to make them engines of innovation and productivity.

We've talked here before about the state of the economy and the implications for urban development, and you know our outlook. We talk a lot about the promotion of mixed use development being a tool for cities to grow more responsibly and sustainably. These types of projects are certainly more difficult to implement, but the long term benefits more than make up for it. The challenge today, of course: what happens when there isn't much of a market for one of the uses - like when the retail market is facing its greatest challenge since the Depression? Do we look no farther than evidence of the problem to find the solution? Certain suburbs and their struggling malls may be the answer. Stay tuned this week for images and and updates from our nation's capital.