REAL ESTATE
Energy Transmission is a Real Estate Issue
Unfortunately, the power grid remains regionalized in a quasi-regulated Federal system that lacks the seamless fluidity of U.S. Interstate Highways. Efforts to nationalize the grid or at least connect wind energy generated from the sparsely populated interior to the densely settled East Coast have been effectively blocked by the states. This has left states with little room to improve power transmission. This situation is exemplified by California and Texas; now stymied with grid congestion.
It may take an Act of Congress, but some land use solutions may be available at the Federal Level:
1. Nationalize the transmission grid like the interstate highway system
2. Support super siting authorities at the state level to override local land use constraints
3. Expedite environmental review to balance ecological concerns with climate mandates.
Finally, recognize that our energy transmission grid serves all real estate as it both encumbers land and connects our communities.
https://cre.org/real-estate-issues/winner-of-the-2025-jared-shlaes-prize-energy-transmission-is-a-real-estate-issue/
Tapping Earth’s heat
The promise of new engineering techniques for geothermal energy – heat from the Earth itself – has attracted rising levels of investment to this reliable, low-emission power source that can provide continuous electricity almost anywhere on the planet. That includes ways to harness geothermal energy from idle or abandoned oil and gas wells. In the first quarter of 2025, North American geothermal installations attracted US$1.7 billion in public funding – compared with $2 billion for all of 2024, which itself was a significant increase from previous years, according to an industry analysis from consulting firm Wood Mackenzie.
https://enewspaper.denverpost.com/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx
The HOA Assessment Crisis: How New Laws Are Crushing 30-Year-Old Condos
If your HOA manages 30+ year old condos and hasn’t completed structural integrity planning, you’re facing potential financial catastrophe. Here’s what you need to know before it’s too late. The numbers don’t lie. We’re witnessing the largest regulatory overhaul in community association history, and the financial carnage is already visible. Condo values are plummeting $50,000-$100,000, owners are facing six-figure special assessments, and entire communities are struggling to survive the new legal reality. After the Surfside tragedy, lawmakers moved fast.
https://realestate-business-broker-guru.beehiiv.com/p/the-hoa-assessment-crisis-how-new-laws-are-crushing-30-year-old-condos
Energize Denver Small Building Countdown
The first group of small buildings in Denver are approaching their compliance deadline for Energize Denver. Commercial and multifamily buildings 15,001-24,999 sq. ft. will need to take action to get into compliance by December 31, 2025. Each step of the compliance process, such as choosing a contractor, scheduling upgrades, or filling out your compliance paperwork with a professional, can take up to several weeks to complete.
https://denvergov.org/Government/Agencies-Departments-Offices/Agencies-Departments-Offices-Directory/Climate-Action-Sustainability-and-Resiliency/Cutting-Denvers-Carbon-Pollution/Efficient-Commercial-Buildings/Denver-Building-Regulations/Energize-Denver-Building-Performance-Policy/Buildings-5000-24999-sq-ft/Compliance-Guide
Public Restrooms: The Hidden Infrastructure of Civic Trust
Public restrooms are actually one of the most underutilized tools in urban planning, as well as one of the easiest pulse checks for urban vitality. If a city can maintain its bathrooms as clean, safe, and functional, chances are it’s doing a lot of other things right, too. On the other hand, neglected restrooms send a clear message that public spaces are not a priority; or signal to inhabitants that they shouldn’t spend time there at all. At a time when cities across the United States are grappling with prioritizing investments in revitalization, walkability, and placemaking, we believe that the humble public restroom deserves a renewed spotlight.
https://www.planetizen.com/features/136028-public-restrooms-hidden-infrastructure-civic-trust
Clash of the titans: Here are the biggest AI data center projects
Gigawatts — a million kilowatts — is a metric increasingly used as a yardstick to measure the scale of AI infrastructure and the energy consumed by projects like these. According to the Department of Energy, in 2022 the average annual amount of energy used by a residential home was 10,791 kilowatt-hours (kWh). Based on this figure, 10 gigawatts is roughly enough power to supply 8 million homes for a day. The other key attribute of these titanic data centers is how many thousands of pricey GPUs are filling their racks to the ceiling. Here’s how the biggest-profile projects from the top players stack up:
https://sherwood.news/tech/clash-of-the-titans-here-are-the-biggest-ai-data-center-projects/
As AI demand soars, here’s what can go wrong in data center development
Projects such as the Nvidia-OpenAI venture are so ambitious they dwarf data storage facilities built just a few years ago, a sign of the growing presence of AI — and the continued need for cloud data storage. Ever-larger investments by the likes of Google and Meta demonstrate a bullish outlook for the sector because AI promises a transformative future with unprecedented leaps in automation, personalization and productivity. But some analysts are sounding the alarm about a complex environment that could conspire to cause some data storage projects to go awry. Here are some factors that could upend a project:
https://www.costar.com/article/1407030672/as-ai-demand-soars-heres-what-can-go-wrong-in-data-center-development
How the Downtown Development Authority could fix Denver’s biggest problem
On Thursday, the Denver Business Journal brought together a panel of DDA experts to discuss how the investment can shape and change the city. The panel included Jamie Giellis, founder and president of Centro, a company that works on community development and neighborhood revitalization; Adeeb Khan, executive director of Denver Economic Development and Opportunity; Bill Mosher, Denver’s chief projects officer; and Doug Tisdale, chairman of the DDA board. Revitalizing downtown is key in light of the Denver city government budget deficit, which is driven largely by a shortfall in expected sales taxes, city officials said. Sales taxes from downtown Denver used to account for 13.5% of the city’s budget and now account for just 8.5%, Khan said.
https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2025/10/03/downtown-development-authority-panel-denver.html
The New Arena: How Sports-Anchored Districts Are Reshaping Cities
The radical evolution of stadium, ballpark, and arena architecture has occurred over a relatively brief period. The birth of modern-day sports facilities is largely attributed to the design of Arrowhead Stadium and Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, in the early 1970s. Both were among the earliest examples of single-purpose venues with modern amenities. However, those stadiums are surrounded by a sea of parking, just off I-70, and are nearly 15 minutes from the heart of downtown. Like many other sports venues that came in later years, they lack thoughtful pedestrian scale or community connection. They function much like isolated spaceships—massive structures in the middle of a city, daunting in size and scale, with many missed opportunities to be valuable neighbors. So what has changed?
https://urbanland.uli.org/design-planning/the-new-arena-how-sports-anchored-districts-are-reshaping-cities
The Landmark U.S. Office Buildings That Are on Life Support
Many cities whose skylines took shape in the early and mid-20th century have them: the Chrysler Building in New York; Times Mirror Square in Los Angeles; Renaissance Center in Detroit; the LaSalle Street corridor in Chicago. The richly decorated lobby of the Chrysler Building, featuring Art Deco design with marble walls, a muraled ceiling, and a man walking through. Plans to overhaul New York’s landmark Chrysler Building, with its beloved art deco lobby, ran aground several years ago. Some have made it to the other side of the conversion process. New York’s Woolworth Building, once the world’s tallest, reinvented its top floors as high-end condominiums. Both the PSFS Building in Philadelphia and the Foshay Tower in Minneapolis were reborn as hotels. A few landlords have succeeded in luring office tenants to historic properties, particularly when they acquired them at today’s discounted prices. After Seattle’s Smith Tower was bought on the cheap by a local group, they more than doubled occupancy to over 75%. But in today’s office downturn, many cities are pockmarked with iconic office towers whose owners are struggling to figure out a second act. As they sit dark year after year, they grow costlier to fix.
https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/commercial/office-buildings-empty-conversion-16cf3a62?st=C8SrZo
Golf’s resurgence has investors paying top dollar for courses
The National Golf Foundation shows record golf participation, with 28.1 million Americans taking to a golf course in 2024 — the most since 2008. Golf is more diverse than it has been in years past, as well, with 28% of golfers women and 25% Black, Asian or Hispanic, the highest respective percentages recorded, according to the foundation. The foundation also reports that after decades of shrinking, the number of courses in the United States is on the rise, adding six facilities and 17 courses since 2022. While those numbers aren’t large, the gains mark a huge reversal since the Great Recession and after, a time when more than 2,000 facilities closed.
https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2025/03/23/golf-course-country-club-investors-real-estate.html
We need to talk about ‘missing massive’ housing
Jersey City is a unicorn. It’s one of the only coastal cities growing like a sunbelt city. Over the past 15 or so years, its population has increased by 20 percent and its housing stock by 24 percent. But instead of growing out, as they do down south, Jersey City grew up. Last month, I wrote about the political and economic forces that made Jersey City’s building boom possible for Vital City’s housing issue (which readers of this newsletter should absolutely check out). It’s not an unalloyed success story: There have been real growing pains and missed opportunities. But through its building boom, Jersey City has managed to retain its diversity, protect low-income tenants, add to its affordable housing stock, and create a more vibrant street scene. All the while, it’s done more than its fair share to address the housing shortage in the New York area.
https://benjaminschneider.substack.com/p/missing-massive-housing
How the Great Real Estate Transfer Will Reshape Our Cities
Local governments will need to begin preparing for this transformation. That’s because family real estate is a crucial part of the coming wealth transfer: While boomers make up 20 percent of the country’s population, they own 41 percent of the real estate. And after years of trailing millennials in home purchases, boomers are now the largest consumers of homes, outpacing that younger generation 42 percent to 29 percent in 2024. Beyond single-family homes, inheritances will also include assets like commercial and industrial properties and greenfield sites ready for development.
https://www.governing.com/urban/how-the-great-real-estate-transfer-will-reshape-our-cities
AFFORDABLE HOUSING
106 Years Ago She Predicted Today’s Housing Crisis. What if we’d Listened?
In fact, these two issues — too many restrictions on the construction of market-rate housing, and too little government funding for low-income housing — are closely interconnected, and always have been. That connection is the focus of Edith Elmer Wood’s under-appreciated 1919 book, The Housing of the Unskilled Wage Earner: America’s Next Problem. In it, the fiction-writer turned policy wonk offers her vision for social housing in America based on an original, but highly intuitive, diagnosis of the nation’s housing problem. A century later, her framework remains an excellent one for understanding the nation’s current housing crisis, providing a historical lens on the “homelessness is a housing problem” thesis.
https://www.planetizen.com/features/136015-106-years-ago-she-predicted-todays-housing-crisis-what-if-wed-listened
What’s Next for Opportunity Zones: A Brighter Future for U.S. Multifamily Development
This tax framework departs from traditional community development approaches and allows urban revitalization without direct government subsidies. In less than a decade, OZs have reversed the downward trajectories in many targeted communities by allowing private stakeholders to do the heavy financial lifting. The impact of Opportunity Zones on housing production across the country reveals a success story few anticipated when the program first launched in 2017. OZs accounted for 20 percent of all new multifamily units in 2023—up from just eight percent when the program began—a growth trajectory in affordable housing that directly benefits both economically distressed areas and the greater community.
https://urbanland.uli.org/capital-markets-and-finance/whats-next-for-opportunity-zones-a-brighter-future-for-u-s-multifamily-development
Opportunity Zone program gets an upgrade. Here’s what’s changing.
The original Opportunity Zone program is set to expire at the end of 2026, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late for the initiative to receive an upgrade. The program, introduced during President Trump’s first term as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, will now see more than one-third of its designated areas classified as “rural.” That makes them eligible for a set of perks passed into law with this summer’s sweeping federal tax and spending legislation.
https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2025/10/08/opportunity-zone-program-real-estate-rural-changes.html
Colorado Opportunity Zone Program
Federal bill H.R. 1 was signed into law in July 2025, making the Opportunity Zone program permanent and updating the associated eligibility requirements, benefits, and other aspects of the program. In accordance with the updated requirements, OEDIT will soon embark on a multi-month process to support the Governor in nominating up to 25% of Colorado’s low-income census tracts to be opportunity zones.
https://oedit.colorado.gov/colorado-opportunity-zone-program
Mapping a Way Out of the US Housing Affordability Crisis
That’s what makes Sara Bronin’s project different: The Houston-born architect and professor of law at George Washington University is building a national tool to turn the focus back on those localized issues. Bronin leads the nonprofit National Zoning Atlas, an ongoing effort to map each and every city, county and state zoning code that determines where jurisdictions can and cannot build housing. By making visible the arcane and byzantine rules that underscore the lack of housing supply, her organization aims to expose how the housing affordability crisis is driven by zoning — which she has described as “arguably the most important power of local government, with tremendous impacts on the economy, the environment and our society.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-09/national-zoning-atlas-founder-sara-bronin-wins-heinz-foundation-award
Boston is piloting window heat pumps in affordable housing
Heat pumps, which are essentially reversible air conditioners, are key to electrifying heating. They provide potentially life-saving cooling, too. Because they shift around ambient heat instead of generating it anew, the appliances are routinely two to four times as efficient as electric-resistance and fossil-fuel-fired options. (Gradient claims its heat pumps are also about 50% more efficient than plain old window AC units.)
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/heat-pumps/boston-gradient-window-heat-pump-public-housing
REAL ESTATE AND MOBILITY
Parkonomics: Rethinking Future Proofing
For too long, the concept of “future-proofing” a parking garage has been narrowly defined, often limited to the idea of eventual adaptive reuse. Developers and designers have focused on creating structures with flat floors and high ceilings, with the vague notion that, one day, the garage might be converted into apartments, offices, or retail space. Although such consideration is not unworthy, it misses the immediate and critical dimension of future-proofing: designing for the profound operational and technological shifts that are already reshaping the parking industry.
https://urbanland.uli.org/issues-trends/parkonomics-rethinking-future-proofing
These Cities Are Embracing Walkability
Mid-sized and smaller cities are quietly gaining ground in pedestrian-oriented development. Minneapolis leverages its skyway system for year-round walking, Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods on steep hillsides are increasingly well-connected for foot travel and St. Louis has reinvigorated historic districts for walkable lifestyles. New Orleans’ French Quarter and Garden District remain iconic for their continuous, pedestrian-friendly streets and streetcar system, while Burlington, Vermont and Ann Arbor, Michigan, top the walkability lists for smaller cities, the former has car-free downtowns and the latter offers extensive pedestrian zones anchored by universities.
https://www.globest.com/2025/10/08/these-cities-are-embracing-walkability/
MOBILITY
Should We Let Public Transit Die? – Jarrett Walker
Why are transit agencies running out of money? And with all the crises dominating the news, does this crisis deserve our attention? Public transit has been sustained for decades by a mixture of fare revenues and various kinds of government funding. Transit agencies aren’t profitable, any more than roadbuilding is, but they produce two big types of benefit that justify their subsidies. First, dense cities do not have room for everyone to drive alone in a car, so their functionality depends on large numbers of people traveling in ways that use space efficiently. Transit — along with cycling, walking and carpooling — is critical to the economic functioning of these cities. (Reducing car use has other benefits, such as lower emissions and support for denser development, but the need to use space efficiently is the key thing that no technology will change.) Second, all communities have people who cannot, don’t want to, or shouldn’t be driving. They also have people who may find it financially liberating to own fewer cars. Transit is part of how we include those people in society and grant them the same freedoms that motorists enjoy.
With its high-speed train, China has achieved what seemed impossible: flying is not profitable on an 808-mile route.
On the rails between Beijing and Shanghai, two of the country’s largest megacities, an unprecedented transformation is taking place in the field of mobility. The 1,300-kilometre link is now dominated by high-speed rail. The contrast is striking: 52 million passengers will be travelling by rail in 2024, compared with just 8.6 million by air. A ratio of six to one. The line generated 42,000 million yuan in revenue (around 5.4 billion euros), with a net profit of nearly 1.8 billion dollars. Faced with such success, even the most affluent classes, long captives of air transport, are now turning their backs on flying.
https://evidencenetwork.ca/this-wave-cannon-could-set-a-record-by-drilling-19000-meters-deep-to-harness-the-heat-from-superhot-rocks/
Is microtransit a cost-effective alternative or a costly competitor to public transit?
We find that while many agencies identify microtransit ridership goals, they varyingly measure ridership effects. Few microtransit services appear to increase overall transit ridership, and some services provide a more reliable alternative or operate outside fixed-routes. Our findings suggest that transit agencies can improve transit ridership and connectivity more systematically if they design microtransit programs to fill spatial and temporal gaps in fixed-route service.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0264275125007917
New Study Shows How Paris Pedaled Its Way to a Cycling Revolution
The French capital has quietly—and quickly—become one of the most bike-friendly cities in the world. What started as a series of emergency “coronapistes,” or pop-up bike lanes, built during the pandemic has evolved into a permanent cycling network spanning hundreds of kilometres. Paris is now a place where parents ferry kids to school by cargo bike, where commuters glide past the Seine on protected lanes, and where the sound of gears clicking often replaces the blare of horns. And the numbers prove it’s more than a passing trend. A new study reveals that cycling traffic in Paris has increased by 240% between 2018 and 2023, while car traffic has steadily declined. In central districts, more than one in ten trips are now made by bike—a remarkable shift for a metropolis once synonymous with gridlock.
https://momentummag.com/new-study-paris-cycling-revolution/
Toronto bike share program set for record year, ridership may hit 16M by 2030
“Nearly 200,000 new users have joined this year, illustrating Bike Share Toronto’s role as a fast, affordable, and joyful mobility option for consumers.” Bike Share Toronto began as Bixi Toronto in 2011, with 1,000 bicycles available from 80 locations primarily in the downtown core. The TPA took over the program in 2014, giving it its current name, and expanding it into a citywide network currently consisting of 1,042 stations and 10,251 bikes, including 2,319 e-bikes.
https://globalnews.ca/news/11469542/bike-share-toronto-projections/
Denver exploring idea of using demand-based parking fees
“Demand-based pricing would be looking at analytics that are provided by historical actuals, actual experience, actual demand, and then helping that inform what the pricing should be,” Cindy Patton, DOTI’s chief operating officer, told 9NEWS. The program differs from another model, the dynamic pricing system, which requires meters to communicate constantly and adjust rates in real time. Dynamic pricing, similar to a “surge” price one may see on an Uber or Lyft, requires technology that the city’s current meters do not employ. Instead, Patton said Denver would use a less expensive approach that relies on historical data. “Most cities have gone with more of a demand-based pricing system,” she said. “Our argument is that demand-based gets you most of the way there. It is a lot less expensive to manage, and it’s still data-driven, and we have a firm philosophy to use data to drive our decisions.”
https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/colorado-news/denver-may-use-demand-based-parking-fees/73-d734137f-141b-4bf1-9d66-17b2c31ec20d?utm_campaign=BD%20Newsfeed&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz–6kV-ZPNW5w52TK6d65GlOP1OXG4cC3J8J28lnz3MSk4iZKgE2LASV2ZSxeflktObUGVdQe2Qtbx-B80NwckvymIi_pg&_hsmi=384578786&utm_content=384578786&utm_source=hs_email
Are speed limits on the rise? As states OK 80 mph on highways, cities say ’20 is plenty’
In denser, more residential areas, an increasing number of states from coast to coast are allowing local governments to slow drivers down to improve safety. Meanwhile, highway speed limits are climbing in less traveled areas, with at least nine states allowing drivers to legally zoom along at 80 miles per hour.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/10/11/speed-limits-rise-highways-fall-cities/86457748007/
Colorado’s RTD wants to borrow $539M for diesel buses, delay electric transition
There may be issues with going all-electric. Those buses may have charging needs during service, particularly in summer hours when air conditioning puts greater demand on batteries. RTD’s three large bus facilities are not currently set up to charge. Storage of electric buses could be an issue. “Current facilities need significant upgrades to safely store battery-electric vehicles,” said RTD. Greater Denver Transit points out that garage facilities need upgrades even to deal with diesel or hybrid buses. RTD said this is a change only to compress the timeline of the “Fleet and Facilities Transition Plan,” which was previously adopted by the board with a policy of transitioning to electric by 2050.
https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/colorados-rtd-borrow-539m-diesel-buses-delay-electric/
