The Urban Land Institute recently announced that the team representing Columbia University and Pratt Institute has taken top honors in the 2020 ULI/Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition. The ideas contest provides graduate students with the opportunity to devise a comprehensive design and development scheme for a large-scale site in an urban area. Again this year, Indiana students gained real-world experience by participating in the competition.

This year’s competition involved an area in midtown Miami, split between the Wynwood and Edgewater neighborhoods. The Florida East Coast Railway bisects the study area, where students evaluated the potential to create a thriving, mixed-use neighborhood around a commuter train station, while considering issues of housing affordability, sustainability, and resilience in their proposals.

Each Indiana team consisted of one student from the University of Indianapolis’ Master’s in Real Estate program and four students from Ball State University’s College of Architecture and Planning—a blend of master of urban design students from CAP Indy and landscape architecture students from Muncie. Adjunct professors Jessica Thorpe, DAVID RUBIN Land Collective, and Josh Anderson, Anderson + Bohlander, served as advisors for the teams.

“The competition challenged us to address resilient design, sustainability, affordability, connectivity and walkability,” said Andy Beck, one of the Ball State CAP participants. “The study site was split by railroad tracks, making the connection between two separate neighborhoods a challenge. The other twist was that we needed to plan for a commuter rail line, and plan for a station for that line. We had the option to place the station just outside the competition boundaries, but both teams chose to place the station on our sites to help create a dense, transit-oriented development.”

“This is an excellent opportunity for our urban design students to collaborate in an interdisciplinary way,” said Joseph Blalock Jr., ASLA, PLA, associate professor of landscape architecture, master of urban design program director, and associate department chair for Ball State University’s R. Wayne Estopinal College of Architecture and Planning. “The fast-paced and time-sensitive nature of the competition requires them to operate at a different level, often changing their outlook from student to burgeoning professional.”

“ULI Hines is the largest and most competitive real estate case competition in the country,” said Eric Harvey, JD, program director of the Master of Professional Studies in Real Estate Development at the University of Indianapolis. “Participants contribute countless hours during the two-week contest and walk away with a once-in-a-lifetime experience, new friends, and an addition to a portfolio that only a few thousand elite real estate professionals share. The planning, programming, and financial feasibility requirements stretch students farther in two-weeks than most professionals have an opportunity to experience during their entire careers.”

About the ULI Hines Student Competition

The ULI Hines Student Competition “is part of ULI’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.”

The Hines Student Competition was created with a generous endowment from longtime ULI leader Gerald Hines, founder of the Hines real estate organization.

For more information, visit: https://americas.uli.org/programs/awards-competitions/hines-student-design-competition