Features

By Rick Lloyd and Oliver Fox, senior directors, MGAC The construction industry is used to navigating volatility, even if 2025 has certainly brought a unique lineup of challenges. Persistent inflation, supply chain disruptions, rising material costs, tariffs and skilled labor shortages affect all budgets. More broadly, market uncertainty can make owners, investors and contractors understandably more conservative about cost. At the same time, public and private organizations are under growing pressure to meet ambitious carbon and energy performance mandates. This combination of market conditions has put additional pressures on the role of project cost management, but it has also created opportunities to think more proactively about strategizing costs more efficiently. Ultimately, cost managers can use certain best practices to help ensure more effective project outcomes and mitigate risks. Unlike in Europe and the United Kingdom, where carbon mandates are more consistent and mature, such policies in the United States are less consistent, in part because standards can vary significantly by state or city. Some states, such as California and Massachusetts, have more progressive embodies systems for tracking carbon usage and stricter building performance requirements. Generally, however, U.S. developments and capital projects focus first on project costs, then factor in carbon …

By Jake Zwaagstra, CEO, TriCelta Development In many cases, the success or failure of a commercial development can boil down to one thing: trust. While stakeholders can be presented with a neatly packaged plan and broad estimates, without a clear breakdown of costs, data sources or reasoning behind key decisions, this can lead to confusion, second-guessing and sometimes, costly surprises down the line. Transparency is a fundamental quality in project planning, and it starts with an understanding of how every dollar is allocated, how risks are assessed and how the supporting data validates each recommendation. In order for stakeholders to function as confident decision-makers in the development process, transparency must guide the entire approach. When owners and their representatives provides visibility into costs, risks and long-term implications, they shift from passive collaborators into active, informed decision-makers. That sense of empowerment accelerates projects and builds resilience against the challenges of fluctuating markets and unpredictable environments. The Truth About Costs Today’s development landscape is anything but predictable. Across many markets, rising costs are reshaping the way projects are planned and delivered. Developers across the country are facing escalating expenses tied to materials and labor shortages, all while demand for housing and infrastructure continues …

By Ben Donsky, principal at Agora Partners Urban areas across the United States are increasingly facing the legacy of the physical and social divides created by existing highway infrastructure. For decades, elevated interstates have carved neighborhoods in half, often cleaving downtowns from their surrounding communities and draining the activity of urban cores. As cities experiment with ways to repair these divides and invite pedestrians back into the heart of civic centers, a new frontier in urban development is gaining momentum: the activation of under-highway spaces. We’ve seen how high-profile deck parks like Klyde Warren Park in Dallas, which this writer helped bring to life through thoughtful programming and activation, have captured the public imagination and inspired proposals like Atlanta’s HUB 404. But these initiatives can be ambitious undertakings that can require significant investment from both the public and private sectors, as well as long-term planning, to come to fruition. That can be especially challenging in today’s funding-constrained times. Confronting this reality, municipal leaders and city planners have started to recognize that the spaces beneath highways — formerly dismissed as trash-strewn, uninhabitable voids within cities — hold immense potential for fostering connectivity, establishing equity and increasing economic prosperity. At Agora Partners, …