Phase 1 of the Aurora Bridge Swales located along Troll Avenue.
The Aurora Bridge Swales are one of six impressive developments from around the world have been selected as winners of the 2023 Urban Land Institute (ULI) Global Awards for Excellence. This year’s winners include two from North America, two from Europe, and two from Asia Pacific.
ULI began the Awards for Excellence program in 1979 to recognize truly superior development efforts in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. Winning projects represent the highest standards of achievement in the land use profession.
In 2023, 128 projects and programs were submitted across the three ULI regions – the Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific. Of those submissions, 23 were named as winners across the regions and were then considered as global finalists. From this impressive field, the jury ultimately selected the six winners. More information on each of the finalists can be found here: Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific. Additionally, more information about the global competition is available at: uli.org/gae.
The Global Awards for Excellence are open to projects and programs in the three ULI regions that are substantially complete, financially viable, and in stabilized operation. The program evaluates submissions on overall excellence, including achievements in marketplace acceptance, design, planning, technology, amenities, economic impact, management, community engagement, innovation, and sustainability, among others.
The winners were selected by a multidisciplinary jury of nine ULI members who had served on their respective regional juries. The jurors represent a range of real estate and land use expertise, including development, finance, planning, urban design, architecture, and landscape architecture.
“This year’s finalists across the three regions included a wide breadth of diversity of building types and sizes, as well as for profit and non-profit, but what ties them all together, beyond design excellence, is their contribution to their community vibrancy and spirit,” said Albert Chan, jury chair and Director of Development Planning and Design, and Chief Sustainability Officer, Shui On Land (SOL) Shanghai, China. “Each finalist demonstrated pioneering efforts in land use that are worthy of emulation by other developers, and the global winners exhibited the highest degree of alignment with the award criteria, each in their own creative ways. Moreover, the winners often pushed the envelope of sustainable development and carbon net-zero technologies – I’m happy the ULI Global Award for Excellence is playing a part in finding innovative ways to solve this global environmental issue.”