Winter Issue 2022 - 19

thisissue
The Connection between Resilience
and Ambiguity
one professional attribute sometimes referenced
in decision-making is the ability to be comfortable
with ambiguity. Developing new concepts entails
uncertainty: possession of the skills to push forward-
and even lead-with incomplete information.
The ability of real estate leaders to make decisions
and innovate in the face of the unknown can be
seen in this year's Emerging Trends in Real Estate®
reports-covering the United States (page 62) and
Canada (page 66), Europe (page 71), and the Asia
Pacific region (page 74)-which clearly reveal that real
estate is resilient and will remain so even in the face
of uncertainty and seismic transformation.
As Urban Land looks ahead to 2022, unknowns
abound-how offices will ultimately be remade, and
when and how employees return, for example. Also,
how will the commercial real estate industry and the
world decarbonize the built environment to meet the
global goal of net zero emissions by 2050?
Decarbonizing the built environment, of course,
means innovation. In LandWrites (page 76), " ResilientHub:
A Study in Getting Office Buildings to Net Zero, "
Andrew Gibbs, managing partner of Greenbelt & Co.,
and coauthor Richard Peisner, Michael D. Spear Professor
of Real Estate Development at the Harvard Graduate
School of Design (and author of Professional Real
Estate Development: The ULI Guide to the Business,
the fourth edition due out in fall 2022) take a detailed
look at how a combination of passive and active
building systems, solar photovoltaics, and building
envelope technology can drastically reduce building
energy use.
In the Back Page column on page 88, Kevin Fagan,
senior director and head of commercial real estate
analytics for Moody's Analytics, identifies five key
themes from the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow
(where financial institutions pledged $130 trillion to
help achieve net zero) and explores the potential
impact each will have on real estate capital flows.
" The next decade will be an especially critical period
of change, with ongoing uncertainty amid significant
change in technology, data, and laws, " Fagan writes.
" Commercial real estate market players are likely to
shift their strategies, affecting capital flows into (and
out of) the asset class. "
Meantime, Berlin-based business journalist Bennett
Voyles writes in his " Green Investing " feature (page 54)
about how major developers like Hines are achieving
20 percent higher rental premiums and how technology
is making it easier for projects like Nuveen's the
Cube in Berlin (our cover image) to be sustainable.
This issue of Urban Land also highlights the voices
of key women leaders, including Kathleen Carey, Claire
De Briere, Gianna Pigford, and Collete English Dixon,
as ULI celebrates the 10th anniversary of its Women's
Leadership Initiative (WLI). The past decade not only
reveals an increase in female membership in ULI, but
also increased dedication to developing talent, as
illustrated in our story " The Goldie Initiative: Prestigious
Scholarship Program Prepares Women for Leadership
Roles " (page 25).
Educating the next generation of diverse leaders
will figure prominently in the future, as will the need
for public/private partnerships to push to expand and
diversify the ranks of developers, says Kacey Cordes,
vice president, affordable housing, at U.S. Bancorp
Community Development Corp. in " Outlook for Public/
Private Partnerships " (page 48), by San Francisco Bay
area-based business writer Ron Nyren. In this piece,
leaders in ULI'S Public/Private Partnership Councils
offer insight on the project types with strong potential
for public/private partnerships in the coming year,
even as the industry awaits news of what kind of funding
the U.S. federal government will eventually release
for infrastructure and housing. The latter, mayhap,
comes under the heading of " known unknowns. " UL
SIBLEY FLEMING is editor in chief of Urban Land.
WINTER 2022
URBAN LAND
17
The 2021 United
Nations Climate Change
Conference, more
commonly referred to
as COP26, was the 26th
United Nations Climate
Change Conference,
held at the SEC Centre
in Glasgow, Scotland,
U.K.
CHRISTOPHER CHAMBERS / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
http://www.SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
Winter Issue 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Winter Issue 2022
