Professor Paul Cheshire, Emeritus Professor of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics (LSE) will sadly be stepping down from the ULI UK Executive Committee at the end of the year. Paul has been a valuable member of the committee for five years and has helped drive our content and programming.

An economist by training, Paul, has a strong interest in policy analysis and policy related fields, and was recently named one of the planning industry’s most influential people. During his time at ULI he has helped ULI UK connect with academia and has introduced some of our key programmes including the ULI UK Academic Prize and the Research Insights series.

The ULI UK Academic prize is awarded annually, in partnership with The Journal of Economic Geography (JOEG) and Oxford University Press, to the author(s) of the best JOEG paper published that year. Last year’s winners from the Universities of Southampton, UK and North Carolina, USA impressed the judges with their paper on ‘The Economic Value of Local Social Networks’.

The Research Insights Series aims to connect real estate professionals with current academic research. The series features a curated selection of practical and well executed research papers prior to publication in academic journals and aims to debate the practical application alongside the theory. Past topics have included the economic effects of owner distance and local property management on office markets (apparently proximity matters; investors located closely to their office buildings are able to extract significantly higher effective rents, especially if these buildings are of low quality) and the energy costs of historic preservation.

We would like to thank Paul for sharing his invaluable knowledge and experience with us during his time on the committee.

A list of current ULI UK Executive Committee members can be found on our website