ULI San Diego-Tijuana is introducing our newest Local Product Council: ULI SURF. SURF, which stands for Sustainability & Urban Resilience Forum, is a collaborative of designers, developers, planners, policymakers, investors, and analysts unified through their passion for climate-positive design.

As the newest Local Product Council at ULI San Diego-Tijuana, ULI SURF aims to share best practices and scalable solutions for reducing emissions and advancing climate change adaptation strategies. In doing so, ULI SURF is working to frame development as an opportunity for advancing the City of San Diego’s Climate Action Plan and Climate Resilience Plan.

Co-founder of ULI SURF, Andrew Schlesinger, PLA, SITES AP, says that the inspiration to create this new committee emerged after attending the ULI Resilience Summit in Toronto back in 2023. Seeing national leaders and changemakers from a range of professions come together to advance big scale sustainability and resilience efforts made him realize the collective impact that ULI members can have regionally, nationally, and globally. He recognized the need to bring this concept home to San Diego. Schlesinger began to envision a committee which could help to frame ULI as a change agent for catalyzing San Diego’s sustainability goals and climate adaptation agendas.

Along with Schlesinger, ULI SURF is co-chaired by City of San Diego’s Chief Sustainability Officer, Shelby Rust-Buso, and City of San Diego’s Chief Resilience Officer, Julia Chase. Working with Rust-Buso and Chase, ULI SURF offered a soft launch in Spring 2024 and explored best design and development practices as outlined in San Diego’s Climate Action Plan (CAP) and Climate Resilience SD. Looking towards Fall 2024, ULI SURF will ramp up events as a hub for sustainability innovation and resources, connecting ULI members to emerging trends and opportunities to do more good with their projects.

Each year, ULI SURF will also look to select a climate design topic as a guiding theme. Schlesinger expects this debut year to focus on the dual topic of extreme heat and extreme flooding– two issues the San Diego region has been severely struggling with in recent years. Fortunately, design solutions that tend to reduce extreme heat onsite also help with reducing extreme flooding. By leveraging ULI’s collective expertise, talent, and resources, ULI SURF can help to change the trajectory and legacy of development in our city, one project at a time.

Interested in joining? Click here to apply to be a member.