In a world filled with ever more mediated and staged experiences—an increasingly unreal world—consumers are now making decisions based on how real they perceive various offerings to be. As a result, businesses must become adept at rendering authenticity. This challenge can be defined best as the management of the customer perception of authenticity. To be blunt: you must get real and not just claim you're real.

What does it take to develop authentic places that tenants, shoppers, and residents love? How does a development team incorporate place making principles into the project planning process? What does it take to make a vision a profitable reality? Our panel of leading developers will answer these questions and share their strategies for creating profitable, authentic mixed-use places that stand up to the test of time.

Mixed-use can offer great rewards—and equally great risks. What's the secret to developing a profitable mixed-use project? How do you excel at so many different product types at once? Who invests in mixed-use projects? What uses are most important to provide cash flow? Learn from a panel of experts how to structure your business, find financing, and make money in the challenging, evolving world of mixed-use development.

Great place making requires big investment in structured parking, good design, and dynamic public spaces—investments that often require public investment. But, striking a balance between public and private expectations can challenge the most experienced development team. What does the public sector expect from the private sector? Where can the public sector most effectively invest to create viable projects? Explore how private developers and public agencies can effectively partner to invest in and build highly successful mixed-use environments.

Place making is more than designing a mixed-use town center or urban village. It is about creating a real place for people to live, work, and play; a place with its own character that is developed organically and gets better with time. In short, place making is a strategy for putting the there there in mixed-use development. What makes a great place? What makes a place real and authentic? How do you use the spaces between the buildings to create a sense of place? What does place making mean to the bottom line? What amenities do people really want? This no-holds-barred session explores how to design and develop a real place, not just a mixed-use project.

Office space successfully anchors many mixed-use projects and provides workers to animate public spaces and support retail businesses. Knowledge economy employers—high-tech companies, design firms, and similar industries—seek out lively, mixed-use, urban environments to help them attract and retain creative workers. How can you put your project on the A-list for knowledge economy office tenants? What do these tenants look for in a project? What makes the difference between a lease and vacant space for knowledge industries?

Going green requires innovative design solutions. This session will explore the spectrum of sustainability solutions for place making projects, from lo-tech to high-tech, currently being used in the Western United States. How can sustainability become part of a project's identity? Can green technologies enhance public realm management? What's the trick to going green and enhancing the bottom line?

With four-dollar-a-gallon gas driving up transit use across America, transit-oriented development will become a prime opportunity and transit a key amenity for mixed-use projects. At the same time, transit-oriented development requires intense collaboration and coordination between public and private entities to plan and implement projects effectively. How can TOD projects be planned to create the greatest benefits for the public and developers? What is the developer's role in shaping transit design? What is the public role in fostering TOD development?