The Urban Land Institute held its annual "Emerging Trends in Real Estate" event this morning in downtown Raleigh.

This is the 32nd edition of ULI's Emerging Trends report, which is based on interviews with 875 professionals in the real estate community as well as changes in the major financial sectors.

The report declares that real estate markets in 2011 are entering something called "The Era of Less," that will be characterized by -- you guessed it -- less returns, less credit, less demand for space and, in general, a shrunken real estate industry. 

While this Era of Less may not seem like much, it actually is an improvement over what Emerging Trends and other real estate prognosticators have been saying in recent years.

Stephen Blank, the ULI Senior Resident Fellow of Finance, presented the 2011 report during this morning's event held at the Fletcher Opera Theater in the Progress Center for the Performing Arts.

He said the market should come off the bottom a bit in 2011, which the biggest beneficiaries being gateway cities like Washington D.C. and New York City and asset classes such as multi-family apartments.

The Triangle, it was noted several times this morning, is now on the radar screen of many institutional investors and has the type of knowledge-based jobs that are seen as a key component of the country's economic recovery.

Among the clouds hanging over the real estate market: $1.5 trillion in loans that will need to be refinanced over the next five years.

Blank always highlights some choice quotes from ULI's interviews.

A team of students from UNC-Chapel Hill and N.C. State has won a national urban design competition.

The group bested teams from Harvard, Maryland and Pennsylvania in the fial round of the 2010 Urban Land Institute Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition.

With it, the team pocketed $50,000.

To win, the team created the best redevelopment plan for a San Diego neighborhood, emphasizing affordability, neighborhood diversity and walkability.

Neary 660 students on 132 teams from 48 universities in the United States and Canada applied for the competition.

 Team members include Maria Papiez, Rebecca Myers, Jeff Pleshek and Matt Tomasulo from NCSu and Daria Khramtsova from UNC-CH.

Though the San Diego neighborhood studied for the project is real, the exercise was theoretical. There is no plan to implement any student projects.

A team of students from N.C. State and UNC-Chapel Hill is a finalist in a national urban design competition.

The team that wins the 8th annual Urban Land Institute Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition nets $50,000. The NCSU/UNC team's entry will go up against similar urban development proposals from teams from Harvard, Maryland and Penn.

The challenge: design a development site on 73.5 acres in downtown San Diego. The competition is based on a hypothetical redevelopment project city planners want to take on in San Diego.

The student teams were to act as a full-service development team and create a financial plan, a land-use plan and an urban design scheme.

Nearly 660 students on 132 teams applied to compete. The UNC/NCSU team members include Maria Papiez, Daria Khramtsova, Rebecca Myers, Jeff Pleshek, and Matt Tomasulo. The team's advisor is Robin Fran Abrams, head of NCSU's School of Architecture.

If you're a fan of gallows humor then you would have loved this morning's Urban Land Institute Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2010 forum.

The forum, held at The Renaissance Hotel in North Hills, provided local real estate professionals with ULI's outlook on what's going to happen next year.

To understand how bad 2009 has been all you had to do was listen to the jokes, which made light of ULI Triangle's decision to hold the forum in a first-floor ballroom and not have an open bar afterward where brokers and developers could drink away their sorrows.

As for what ULI expects in 2010, you're not going to like it unless you're sitting on a pile of cash.