KPF will return to the Urban Land Institute (ULI) Spring Meeting this May, continuing the firm’s annual tradition of presenting sustainability research in honor of KPF Co-Founder, A. Eugene Kohn, with a featured session on the technical and economic cases for district-scale electrification.
On Tuesday, May 5, Forth Bagley will join the Randall Lewis Center for Sustainability in Real Estate and Carbon Signal for a session titled “Scaling from Buildings to Districts: Beyond the Building—the Business Case for District-Scale Electrification” at 10:30 AM at Music City Center in Nashville, Tennessee. The group will present preliminary findings from their research into the technical, economic, and design factors that have enabled successful district-scale electrification projects and could unlock future opportunities for energy efficiency and decarbonization. A full report, authored by Carbon Signal and supported by KPF will be published by the ULI’s Randall Lewis Center this summer.
The presentation builds on KPF’s longstanding commitment to advancing climate research through the A. Eugene Kohn Fellowship at the Randall Lewis Center. The program’s past reports include “The Carbon Sweet Spot: Design Tradeoffs for Embodied and Operational Carbon in New Buildings,” produced by researchers at the University of Washington, and “What’s Old is New: Making the Business Case of Urban Adaptive Reuse,” which was undertaken by the Built Buildings Lab. This year’s session extends that inquiry to the district scale, exploring the technical and business feasibility for thermal-district electrification where nearby buildings of complementary uses leverage shared infrastructure to operate more efficiently.
The 2026 ULI Spring Meeting convenes over 4,500 developers, architects, urban planners, investors, and public sector leaders for three days of sessions, development tours, and networking focused on the future of the built environment. KPF’s continued participation in this premier industry forum reflects the firm’s dedication to research-driven design and its ongoing role in shaping the conversation around carbon reduction, climate resilience, and sustainable urbanism.
