ULI Europe’s Milan conference ready for RE’s tough questions

This year ULI Europe’s annual conference will be staged in Milan from 10-13 June, inclusive. The conference, which will be in the Milan convention centre (Allianz MiCo) looks set to attract about 800 people from the industry and across the value chain.

“So it’s a really exciting opportunity to bring people together and there will be lots of networking,” said ULI Europe VP, Research and Advisory Services Sophie Chick in conversation with Real Asset Insight’s Richard Betts.

The conference theme will be The Future of Real Estate. “It’s pretty broad, because we’ll cover a lot of different topics across the four days that we’re in Milan,” Chick said. “But really, we’re looking at the challenges and the opportunities and how we, as an industry, can come together to help tackle some of those really important issues at the moment.”

The event has attracted key note speakers including: Giuseppe Sala, mayor of Milan; José Manuel Durão Barroso, former prime minister of Portugal and former president of the European Commission, who will talk about  the world’s geopolitical situation; and Janet Henry, global chief economist, HSBC who will look at macroeconomic trends. 

Outside the main sessions will be plenary sessions and many side events including forums, roundtables, meetings and site visits.

“What’s really exciting are the forums and round tables where we’re delving into different topics and getting the members and the attendees to input into them,” Chick said.

In particular, three sessions will look at the ULI’s C-Change Program, which focuses on decarbonisation. Others will look at biodiversity, social value and residential and and still more forums will look at capital markets and there will also be opportunities to feed into The ULI’s Emerging Trends in Real Estate Europe report.

The three C-Change sessions will examine: carbon pricing; the ULI’s new Preserve Tool, currently in development delegates an opportunity to shape how the tool will look; and at owner occupier alignment, currently an obstacle to decarbonisation. This session will try to obtain a better understanding from both sides about how they can work together to get decarbonisation happening.

ULI Europe Annual Conference site