This March, ULI Michigan will host its first event under the Urban Land Institute’s Building Healthy Places initiative. The event, which will be held at the Henry Ford Innovation Institute in Detroit, will focus on the practices and principles of building healthy places.
“This initiative is working to make the case that there is a connection between real estate development and how that affects public health issues,” says Shannon Sclafani, who manages the ULI Michigan District Council. Based on ULI research, people who have the strongest attachments to their communities, those communities have the strongest economies. “The things that contributed (to this attachment) were safety and security, community, and emotional health and well being,” Sclafani says.
David Scheuer, a representative of the initiative, will present several ULI reports during the event, including one that makes the case that healthier communities have better economies and, by considering factors such as access to healthier foods, real estate developers will find a larger return on their investment down the road.
Specifically, Sclafani says the developments of the future will not be single-use. “What’s going to attract the millennials and baby boomers to live in these areas will be mixed-used developments, where there’s strong public-private partnerships,” she says.
The event — aimed at public officials, real estate developers, engineers, consultants, and students of urban planning — will feature a presentation on the Henry Ford Health System Neighborhood Master Plan, which aims to provide access to affordable housing and quality education, proximity to jobs, education, retail amenities, and improvements to infrastructure and city services.
Admission to the event, scheduled for March 6, is $50 for ULI members and $75 for non-members. For more information, or to register, click here.
