Sixteen grants totaling $320,000 have been awarded to Urban Land Institute (ULI) district and national councils through ULI’s Urban Innovation Grants program. Only ULI district and national councils are eligible to apply for grants, with awards ranging between $10,000 and $25,000.

Funding for this year’s recipients is provided by the ULI Foundation’s Annual Fund and the Kresge Foundation. The ULI Annual Fund, which provided $260,000 of total awards, supports local ULI projects that recognize or launch innovative public/private partnerships that advance the responsible use of land in building healthy, thriving communities worldwide. The Kresge Foundation provided the remaining $60,000 of funds, which were awarded to three district council projects specifically aimed at developing local programming to promote resilience strategies and practices.

Nine of the grants were given to local projects that promote ULI’s Building Healthy Places Initiative, a program of work linking human health and land development. Another five grants were awarded to projects connected to the ULI Urban Resilience Program, an initiative that works to help communities prepare for increased climate risk in ways that allow for a quicker, safer return to normalcy after a natural disaster.

According to Thomas W. Toomey, chairman of the Urban Innovation Grants committee and chief executive officer at UDR Inc., the grants program is instrumental in providing the means for ULI members to help improve their local communities. “The innovation grant awards are at the forefront of helping local communities both create and implement creative solutions that build better and healthier neighborhoods. With these investments, we see great potential to transfer the ideas and knowledge to communities across the globe.”

The recipients of the 2014 ULI Urban Innovation Fund grants are as follows: