Competition Updates:

The winning team will be announced and will present their proposal on 29 May at the 2024 ULI Asia Pacific Summit in Tokyo.

Competition Outline

The ULI Hines Student Competition—entering its 22nd year in Americas — has been launched in Asia Pacific in 2023 and will be returning for its 2nd year in 2024.

The competition offers final-year undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to form their own multidisciplinary teams and engage in a challenging exercise in developing a proposal for a site that reflects the responsible use of land in an effective creative, and sustainable way.   

Teams of three to five students pursuing degrees in at least two different disciplines will have three weeks to propose a development programme for a real site in a large city in Asia Pacific.

Teams will provide a strategic overview, graphic boards and narratives of their proposals, including designs and market-feasible financial data.

The ULI Hines Student Competition Asia Pacific is open to final-year undergraduate and graduate students currently engaged with a university or similar Institution in the Asia Pacific region.  

The ULI Hines Student Competition Asia Pacific is an ideas competition and be assessed as such. There is no expectation that anyone will apply the submitted schemes to the site.  

Up to three teams will be shortlisted as finalists for the competition. Shortlisted finalists will present their proposals in a virtual forum on April 2024. The winner will be announced on May 2024 at the ULI Asia Pacific Summit.   

All shortlisted finalists shall receive a one-year ULI student membership. The winning team will enjoy a fully paid trip – flight, accommodation and full-access ticket to the ULI Asia Pacific Summit in Tokyo on May 2024. The winning team will be invited to present their winning piece during the Summit. 

2024 Competition – Key Dates

Registration Period* | 21 September 2023 – 2 February 2024
Notification of Eligible Teams | 19 February 2024
Release of Competition Brief w/ Site Information | 23 February 2024
Competition Period | 23 February – 18 March 2024
Finalists Announced | 2 April 2024
Virtual Finalist Presentation | 11 April 2024
Winner Announced | May 2024
Winning Team to Join the ULI Asia Pacific Summit 2024 | May 2024 

*Note: All entries are to be verified by the team’s sponsoring university or faculty.

Competition Background

The competition is part of the 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. 

Long-time ULI leader Gerald D. Hines, the 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. 

At least 10,715 students on over 2,143 teams have participated in the competition since its first year in 2003, including 80 teams (400 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 2022, 93 teams submitted entries from 48 schools. In 2003, the competition’s first year, 49 teams submitted entries from 22 schools. 

ULI Hines Student Competition Americas

ULI Hines Student Competition Europe

2023 ULI Hines Competition Asia Pacific

The competition was the brainchild of legendary developer Gerald D. Hines, founder of the Hines real estate organisation, and aims to raise interest in the key aspects of urban development and redevelopment among younger generations to help foster the creation of better communities. Each year, competing students apply their skills and knowledge of all aspects of real estate and land use to devise development projects for an existing site in a major city. Nineteen teams from all around the region enrolled in the 2023 Asia Pacific competition, representing universities from Singapore, Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Philippines, South Korea, and Vietnam. The three finalists were from Japan, Vietnam, and South Korea.

The winning entry was selected by a jury of six, comprised of regional and local industry leaders from the real estate and built environment sector. The jury was co-chaired by Peter Hyland, director, Urbis (Australia) & Cistri Pte Ltd, and Choon-Fah Ong, board member, Edmund Tie Holdings. Other jury members included Ray Lawler, chief executive officer, Asia Pacific, Hines; Yvonne Lim, group director of physical planning, Urban Redevelopment Authority of Singapore (URA); Xiaomei Lee, regional managing principal, Gensler Greater China; and Mr. Dzung
Nguyen, Co-founder, chief executive officer, enCity.

Teams were tasked with envisioning a proposal that best capitalises on this unique waterfront site, addressing issues of sustainability, accessibility and connectivity within the site and surrounding communities, as well as the integration of natural and heritage elements within the Jurong Lake District (JLD)—planned as Singapore’s largest mixed-use business district outside the city centre. The winning team from Waseda University in Tokyo, called “Team Omusubi,” conducted research into Singapore’s demographic landscape to deep-dive into the issues facing the community. Their winning plan, titled “Jurong Urban Health Campus”, envisions JLD as a model for the future of urban healthy living. The team consisted of Kento Yoshino, Taichi Kawasaki, Haoyang Xu, and Misato Fujii.

2023 ULI Hines Competition Asia Pacific Winner
2023 ULI Hines Competition Asia Pacific Finalists
2023 Competition Brief

For Inquiries, please contact [email protected].