More than 180 top real estate professionals attended the 2019 ULI Belgium Annual Conference, which took place at Library Solvay in Brussels, to explore the topic of building a great city and how to work together to unlock the potential.

A short summary of the day is provided below and an official InfoBurst including full audio recordings of the main conference sessions are available for members only at the bottom of this page.

Throughout history, cities have been the main centres of culture, learning and innovation. It is not surprising that the world’s most urban countries tend to be the richest and have the highest human development. Ongoing rapid urbanisation has the potential to improve the well-being of societies and yet it also presents many human development challenges.

The 2019 ULI Belgium Annual Conference provided a platform for real estate, business and public sector professionals, together with visionary experts, to focus on what makes a great city and how we can work together to unlock the potential of urbanisation.

Following a convivial networking lunch in the grounds of the Library Solvay, Xavier Dennis, ULI Belgium chair, officially opened the conference before handing over to ‘urban superhero’ Greg Clark, a ULI Europe Senior Fellow, who moderated the conference with great enthusiasm.

Listen to Greg Clark’s thoughts on the day and implications for Brussels as a city.

Listen now

Speakers at the conference included:

• Chris Choa, Chair of ULI U.K. and Vice President of AECOM (speaker slides)
• Xavier Denis, Chair of ULI Belgium and Chief Development Officer, AG Real Estate
• Darron Haylock, Partner & Architect, Foster + Partners (speaker slides)
• Brian A. Klinksiek, Director of Strategy and Research, Heitman (speaker slides)
• Arjan Knibbe, Founder, KR&A (speaker slides)
• Guy Perry, Senior Advisor, McKinsey & Company (speaker slides available soon)
• Frederic Pivetta, Managing Director, Dalberg
• Rik Vandenberghe, CEO, BESIX Group
• Maria Vassilakou, Deputy Mayor and Deputy Governor, City of Vienna (speaker slides)
• Lisette van Doorn, CEO ULI Europe (speaker slides)

Photos of the day can be found here.

Audio Recordings

Full audio recordings of the main conference sessions are available to ULI members and can be found here.

InfoBurst

A full summary of the event is available as an InfoBurst below, available for members only to download.