Water Wise Resources

Water Wise: Strategies for Drought-Resilient Development introduces the challenges and opportunities associated with drought and limited freshwater availability, and provides best practices for real estate and land use professionals to address them.

In diesem Webinar werden Best Practices in den Bereichen Wassereinsparung, Effizienz und Wiederverwendung für Landnutzungs- und Immobilienfachleute aus dem ULI-Bericht "Water Wise: Strategies for Drought-Resilient Development" vorgestellt.

Driven by a commitment to environmental stewardship, Apple has become a leader in sustainable business practices throughout its global operations. The company has already achieved carbon neutrality for its corporate emissions and plans to bring its entire footprint, including all its supply chains, to net zero energy by 2030. The company focuses its environmental strategy on three core areas: climate change, smarter chemistry, and resources, which prioritizes renewable materials, zero waste, and water stewardship.

Spread across more than 230 acres in San Diego’s Mission Valley, Civita is a high-density urban village where drought resilience and smart-water strategies have helped attract homeowners and commercial tenants while thoughtfully managing a limited resource. Aside from all the awards received, Civita has been designated as a California Catalyst Community, a program sponsored by the California Department of Housing and Community Development to support innovation and test sustainable strategies that reflect the interdependence of environmental, economic, and community health.

Real estate investment management company Clarion Partners has 56 hotel properties in its portfolio, which includes over 8,300 guest rooms across 25 states in the United States. As part of a larger renovation program from 2014 to 2018, Clarion Partners replaced bathroom fixtures across its hotel portfolio to improve water conservation and energy efficiency.

Credit Human Federal Credit Union’s headquarters at 1703 Broadway in San Antonio is a tangible representation of the company’s belief that being good stewards of financial resources and good stewards of environmental resources go hand in hand. The 12-story, 200,000-square-foot building, which will be certified LEED platinum, aims to reduce environmental stress through building strategies that lower energy and water consumption and ultimately set a new standard for sustainable commercial buildings in Texas.

Denver Water is Colorado’s oldest and largest water utility as well as one of the state’s most innovative champions for sustainability and resource conservation. The five-year redevelopment of Denver Water’s 35-acre operations complex pushes the boundaries of what is possible in water efficiency and reuse, especially in the 187,000-square-foot administration building, which serves as the beating heart of the updated campus.

In the Dawn Creek neighborhood of Lancaster, California, 60 miles north of Los Angeles, KB Home, one of the nation’s largest home builders, is addressing the climate risks of drought, extreme heat, and water availability with the construction of “double-zero” single-family homes—double zero because they use zero energy and zero fresh water for irrigation. A model for the future, the double-zero home is designed and constructed to produce within a year as much energy as it uses through technology such as photovoltaic (PV) solar panels and enough water to irrigate the landscape through an on-site graywater recycling system.

IN SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS, resilience means being able to prepare for, recover from, and adapt to drought. So when USAA Real Estate Company, San Antonio, and the Cambridge Development Group, Dallas, were planning a resort-style destination town center at La Cantera, a master-planned community on land owned by USAA, they committed to developing a project that conserved and recycled water. “Drought in San Antonio is a way of life, and addressing that within the building design made total sense to us,” says Hailey Ghalib, managing director of the USAA Realty Company and national director of its multifamily development program.

Sterling Ranch, a 3,400-acre master-planned community located 20 miles southwest of Downtown Denver, attracts homeowners with its commitment to conservation, technology, and water-smart development. Driven by a culture of innovation and stewardship, the project has implemented many cutting-edge water demand management and drought resilience strategies that set it apart from similarly sized communities throughout the country.

This launch meeting of the Water Wise Development Coalition showcased Water Wise Presentations by ULI, Sonoran Institute, Alliance for Water Efficiency, and WaterNow Alliance.

The second coalition meeting featured presentations of Water-Wise developments by Sterling Ranch Development Company, McWhinney, Maiker Housing Partners, and KB Home. 

The third coalition meeting featured presentations of Water-Wise development resources from WaterSense and WERS.

The fourth coalition meeting featured presentations of Water-Wise Landscape Ordinances and Templates from University of Colorado-Boulder, Sonoma County Water Agency, and FormLA Landscaping.

The fifth coalition meeting featured presentations of Water-wise policies, regulations, and incentives by Alliance for Water Efficiency, Growing Water Smart of the Sonoran Institute, and the City of Colorado Springs.

The sixth coalition meeting featured presentations of Water Conservation and Housing Affordability from Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, WaterNow Alliance, and the City of Buena Vista, Colorado.

The seventh coalition meeting featured an overview presentation of water-neutral development and resources, and three Water-neutral development case studies. 

The eighth coalition meeting featured presentations on Data-Driven Water and Land Use Forecasting and Planning from the Sonoran Institute’s Metrics Project, Center for Geospatial Solutions at Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and CSU. 

The ninth coalition meeting featured presentations on Water Reuse by the Pacific Institute, Carollo Engineers, Worthen Foundation, and Denver Water.