Building Healthy Places Conference Gathers Real Estate Leaders

Last week in Los Angeles, in a post by writer, Rachel MacCleery, “leaders from a cross-section of real estate fields gathered for ULI’s Building Healthy Places: Unlocking the Value conference. The first of its kind for ULI, the event is part of a series of activities being undertaken by ULI as part of the Building Healthy Places Initiative, launched in July.

Co-chaired by the Colorado Health Foundation President Anne Warhover and past ULI chairman Peter Rummell, the conference explored the connections between health and the built environment, and opportunities to use real estate investments to help improve the health of people and create more valuable, thriving communities.

Nearly 300 people are attended the conference, which concluded on February 21st. Speakers painted a picture of troubling health trends– including rising rates of obesity and diabetes– problems linked directly or indirectly to the built environment and to land use decisions. “These are things that ULI’s members can help change,” said ULI’s chair Lynn Thurber, who discussed the strong and growing demand for buildings and projects that contribute to healthy outcomes for people.

“The more I’ve gotten involved in this, the more convinced I am that it will reshape development around the world,” said Peter Rummell. “I’m excited by the potential of building healthy places as a way of doing well by doing good. In my view, healthy amenities will do for community building in the 21st century what golf courses did in the 20th century.”

“The Colorado Health Foundation couldn’t be more pleased to be partnering with ULI on this Initiative,” said Anne Warhover. Noting that improving health care can only go so far, Anne challenged the attendees to figure out how health can be at the center of real estate development. “Philanthropy alone won’t be able to sustain the movement toward healthier places,” she said.

Lew Horn, Managing Director for CBRE in Southern California shared his vision for the recreation of CBRE’s corporate office environment focused on employee health and retention. Horn took a 200 person office of Commercial Brokers used to traditional office space with status perks like corner offices and told them you will now have no paper and no assigned office. This concept, called “free-addressing” will now be adopted across other CBRE offices around the world. Horn noted that wellness came into play after a trip to Amsterdam where he learned that sitting is “the new smoking”. He implemented sit to stand workstations, circadian lighting, aromatherapy, massage, daily yoga, flooring that aids in circulation and eases joint pain and implemented a daily anti microbial/UV lighting cleaning to destroy all bacteria each night. Horn noted that all of his brokerage team are having wellness programming conversations with their respective clients to foster and promote healthy office environments.

Around the world, communities face pressing health challenges related to the built environment. For many years, ULI and its members have been active players in discussions and projects that make the link between human health and development. Health is a core component of thriving communities, whether they are residential or commercial offices.

The ULI Building Healthy Places Initiative will build on that work with a multifaceted program—including research and publications, conventions and advisory activities—to leverage the power of the Institute’s global networks to shape projects and places in ways that improve the health of people and communities.

Through the two-year Building Healthy Places Initiative, which launched in July 2013, ULI is working to promote health across the Globe. #ulihealth