The ULI Hines Student Competition—entering its 22nd year in 2024—offers graduate students the opportunity to form their own multidisciplinary teams and engage in a challenging exercise in responsible land use. Teams of five students pursuing degrees in at least three different disciplines have two weeks to devise a development program for a real, large-scale site in a North American city. Teams provide graphic boards and narratives of their proposals including designs and market-feasible financial data.

This is an ideas competition; there is no expectation that anyone will apply the submitted schemes to the site.

The competition is part of the Institute’s ongoing effort to raise interest among young people in creating better communities, improving development patterns, and increasing awareness of the need for multidisciplinary solutions to development and design challenges.

Longtime ULI leader Gerald D. Hines, founder of the Hines real estate organization, created the competition with a generous endowment after he received the ULI Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development in 2002.

Through 2023, at least 11,135 students on over 2,227 teams have participated in the competition since its first year in 2003, including 84 teams (420 students) who have made it to the finalist round. More than 1,000 real estate and design professionals have served as advisers to these teams. In 2023, 84 teams submitted entries from 39 schools. In 2003, the competition’s first year, 49 teams submitted entries from 22 schools.

The competition is open to students around the world. Students in Europe may also wish to participate in the ULI Hines Student Competition – Europe and students in the Asia Pacific region may wish to participate in the ULI Hines Student Competition – Asia Pacific.

Congratulations to Drew Thompson, Christopher Rini, Jyae McWilson, Edgardo Mcgorty, and Maree “Raz” Rasmussen from Cleveland State and Kent State University CUDC in addition to ULI Members Ken Kalynchuk and Alex Long, and CUDC advisors Maira Faria and Terry Schwartz.