ULI Member Global Infrastructure Survey Findings

Report Summary: To better understand perceived quality and infrastructure priorities by the real estate and land use industry as well as how infrastructure investment will affect real estate development trends, the ULI Curtis Infrastructure Initiative conducted a survey of its members between April 20 and May 17, 2021. The survey also explores what infrastructure means to ULI members based on the initiative’s goal to leverage infrastructure investment to better effect a sense of community and place.

• ULI members see increasing affordable housing, adapting to and mitigating climate change, increasing renewable and green energy, maintaining existing infrastructure, and improving public transportation as the top priorities. Conversely, they view improving stadiums and entertainment venues, modifying roadway capacity, and improving overall logistics networks as low priorities.
• ULI members perceive infrastructure quality higher globally than within the United States. In particular, U.S. members perceived public transportation (bus, subway, and rail), child care and preschool services, and road and bridge quality as poor while their global counterparts all rated these infrastructure categories as at least adequate.
• Members from the United States prioritized social infrastructure investments and general state of good repair while global members prioritized more infrastructure investments in climate-related categories.
• Survey respondents overwhelmingly believe that the government—particularly at the federal or national level and city or local level—is critical for both funding and prioritizing infrastructure delivery. The private sector can play an important role in this effort but does not set the public-good priorities.
• Housing affordability, changes as a result of COVID-19 such as work from home, and climate change were the most mentioned real estate trends that were expected to influence infrastructure investment over the next five years.
• There was no consensus about the definition of infrastructure, but responses related to connectivity, physical assets, basic necessities, the foundation of society, and quality of life were the most common.