Moments before ULI Fall Meeting co-chair Marty Burger, CEO of Silverstein Properties, took the stage, we snapped him (right) with JPMorgan’s Greg Reimers and George Ross and Morrison & Foerster’s Mark Edelstein. ULI’s national convention was last held in NYC, he says, 10 years ago. The skyline has since transformed, the West Side is rising, the outer boroughs have come into their own, and the New Jersey waterfront is undergoing a renaissance. This time around, the conference has pulled in a record 6,000 attendees.

Once upon a time, New York Building Congress president Dick Anderson tells us, ULI was an organization of designers and architects. Now, it engages professionals across the development process, including finance. These folks see the benefit of large-scale planning. Consider NYC’s impressive examples of massive urban planning, he says: the WTC, Central Park, Prospect Park, Hudson Yards, the water system, and the regional transit network. Fall Meeting co-chair Cia Buckley Marakovits of Dune Real Estate Partners says this is the first subway ULI Fall Meeting, which embraces the “Urban” in Urban Land Institute.