ULI national president Rick Rosan kicked off the evening by pointing out the demographic shifts that our cities will sustain in the next two decades. Rosan said that, "with 80% of the world population living in cities in the next 20 years, it will become an urbanized world."

For the Gale Co., which ignited the New Songdo project, much of the challenge was to see that urbanized vision through the wasteland. "We bought 1,500 acres of reclaimed land," said John B. Hynes III, a Gale principal. "The value of the 24/7 city is the same there as anywhere. Our whole emphasis was on the quality of life."

That couldn't have been accomplished without Gale's partnership with the South Korea government, which is responsible for funding to the tune of $15 billion, and while the buy-in by the government is key, the solution is not to throw money at an urban dream. "If you have $15 billion invested by the government" in projects the size and scope of New Songdo City, said Lehman Brothers managing director Raymond C. Mikulich, "there's almost a build-it-and-they-will-come mentality. But it's infrastructure that drives it all."

That, he continued, was what gives any developer the platform for profit. With that in place, the Lehman executive noted, the "capital markets seem to be there to support such projects."

Even that might not be enough. The support of the government means nothing if it doesn't also have the "support of the populace," he noted.

A question from moderator Ian D. Hawksworth of Hongkong Land about graft in foreign countries brought a sobering reply from Mikulich: "It's part of the system," he said, "as it is here."

Concerning the infrastructure issue, Tishman Speyer senior managing director Steven R. Wechsler quietly disagreed with Mikulich. "India has great demographics," he said. "Of their population, 50% is under the age of 25. But they have the worst infrastructure of any democratic country."

Nevertheless, Indian investments seem a safe bet since development there costs "one-fifth of what it would cost in the US," he said. "That's the tricky part of such investment strategies, to figure out what projects make sense for the investors."