Meet the winners of the 2019 LOCUS Leadership Awards


LOCUS: Responsible Real Estate Developers and Investors is pleased to announce the winners of this year’s LOCUS Leadership Awards for Project of the Year, Company of the Year, and the Richard Baron Affordable Housing Award. Winners were announced at the LOCUS President’s Reception and Awards Dinner during the 2019 LOCUS Leadership Summit: Opportunity Rising on Sunday, June 23, 2019 in Arlington, VA.

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Suburban business parks are dead, and six other things we learned at the LOCUS Leadership Summit

Opportunity Rising, last week’s LOCUS National Leadership Summit in Arlington, VA, was a vital gathering, uniting responsible real estate developers and investors with local elected officials and transportation and land-use planners. During the wide range of workshops, panels and sessions, Smart Growth America staff absorbed a few important themes and ideas. Here are seven.

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Seen and heard at the 2019 LOCUS Leadership Summit

a view of downtown DC from across the river in Virginia
Last week the LOCUS Leadership Summit: Opportunity Rising brought forward-thinking real estate developers and investors who are creating sustainable communities together with local elected officials and transportation and land-use planners. Here’s a short look back at what was caught live on Twitter at #LOCUSSummit2019.

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Foot Traffic Ahead: 2019

Walkable urban places (i.e. WalkUPs) occupy less than one percent of the total land mass in the 30 largest metro areas, but deliver outsized economic performance and there is great demand for more of such places. Meeting this pent-up demand for new WalkUPs would create a new economic foundation for the U.S. economy, one far more resilient than one predicated on suburban growth.

In Foot Traffic Ahead 2019, we rank the top 30 metros based on their WalkUPs.

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Meet the inaugural class of LOCUS’ Massachusetts Opportunity Zones Academy


How can cities and towns maximize the positive impact of their Opportunity Zones? The answer is different for every community, and that’s why LOCUS and Smart Growth America are offering tailored technical assistance to six Massachusetts communities in the first-of-its-kind Massachusetts Opportunity Zones Academy.

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How one city is priming itself for Opportunity Zone investment


How does a city make sure it’s ready for investment? A question weighing on many municipal minds is how to organize planning, economic development strategies, and zoning regulations to make it clear to residents, developers, and investors that this is the right place to be. Further, how does a community encourage investment without sacrificing the characteristics that make it an attractive community to its residents?

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