Greg Lindsay Urbanist, Futurist, and Expert on the Post-Pandemic Future of Cities, Work, Travel, Mobility, and more

OFFICES ARE EMPTY. Downtowns are dead. The sub­urbs are Millen­nials’ futu­re. At least two of these truisms are wrong, but why? Employees may be grud­gingly re­tur­ning to the office, but work-from-any­where is here to stay. That doesn’t mean the end of the work week, but new ways and pat­terns of living and working together closer to home, with more flexi­ble real estate and employ­ment to match. That, in turn, means rethin­king who and what cities are for.

Forget down­towns versus their sub­urbs; how can we ima­gi­ne new uses for old high-rises and new districts to re­place dead malls? Because behind the scenes, infla­tion and tech­no­logy is quietly tur­ning retail, gro­ce­ries, and dining inside-out through data, deli­very, and auto­ma­tion. And above all looms the threat of climate change and the oppor­tu­nities of AI and spatial com­pu­ting to trans­form the Inter­net — and the world — as we know it.

Drawing on his research and foresight work for Cornell Tech, Climate Alpha, and MIT’s Future Urban Collec­tives Lab, Greg Lindsay ex­plo­res the urban and real estate im­pli­ca­tions of our never-normal land­scape and ex­plains why the futu­re will be less remote and more human than you might think.

THE ROBOTS ARE COMING – not to steal your job, but to invent enti­rely new ones. Recent advances in arti­?­cial intel­li­gence such as OpenAI’s Chat­GPT cou­pled with auto­ma­tion point toward an increa­singly auto­no­mous world in which agen­cy and per­so­na­lity is em­bed­ded in thin­king ma­chi­nes. Auto­no­my will not only trans­form how and why we work, but also how we think, discover, decide, and even decei­ve our­selves.

What we imagine and produce will take stran­ge new twists and turns as AI increa­singly predict, suggest and convin­ce us do it. In this wide-ranging and eye-opening talk on the promise and perils of AI, author and futu­rist Greg Lindsay explores how autonomy is already upen­ding society, and what we can learn from organiza­tions such as NATO, the U.S. mili­tary, and the Secret Ser­vice about what to do about it.

NEARLY HALF OF AMERICANS were vic­tims of a climate disas­ter last year – whether ?re, floods, heat waves or hurri­canes – with insu­rable losses of more than $100 billion. As people wake up to the realities of clima­te chan­ge – and the growing threat to their homes, live­li­hoods, and families – many are be­gin­ning to ask, “Where should I live some­day?”

Fortu­na­tely, we have answers.

Com­bi­ning cli­mate scien­ce with demo­gra­phics and using arti­?cial intel­li­gence, we can predict to­mor­row’s more resi­lient re­gions. Clima­te chan­ge isn’t just a story about moun­ting catas­tro­phes, but also oppor­tunity – if we har­ness the right tech­no­logies, poli­cies, and political will to build back better else­where. Drawing on his work with the startup Climate Alpha, Greg Lindsay offers cutting edge analy­sis and maps to explain why and where a warm­ing world may still have shelter for us all.

AFTER TWO YEARS APART, Ameri­cans have for­got­ten how to work toge­ther. This is evident in the ongoing tug-of-war over the office. This framing – are we better off alone or in-person? – has domi­nated debates about our post-pan­de­mic destiny. But neither mana­gers nor workers have stopped to ask what it means to be toge­ther, whom we should be together with, and how we can be together.

If the over­night adop­tion of remote work proved many of us can work from vir­tual­ly anywhere, with any­one, what’s stop­ping us from taking it a step fur­ther and work­ing with, well, every­one? Be­cau­se solving the challen­ges that lie ahead of us on the far side of the pan­de­mic requires work­ing together at a scale greater than any one govern­ment or com­pany ever has.

Greg Lindsay explores new ways of being and working together in a world in which corpo­rate silos have cracked open and frus­trated em­ployees have spilled out, des­pe­rate to re­con­nect. Draw­ing upon dozens of post-pan­demic exam­ples as well as his own web3 expe­ri­ments in building a dis­tri­buted auto­no­mous orga­ni­za­tion, or DAO, he offers audien­­ces a vision of what it means to be to­ge­ther – how, why, and with whom – very soon.

A DECADE AGO, self-driving cars were science ?ction leftover from The Jetsons. Today, Google and Tesla are lea­ding a break­neck auto­no­mous arms race, as the glo­bal auto industry races to build electric AVs at a cost of hun­dreds of billions of dollars. But a self-driving SUV may prove to be the horse­less carria­ge of autonomy – rapidly eclip­sed by new species of self-driving scoo­ters, deli­ve­ry­bots, and buil­dings with a mind of their own.

How are these technologies trans­for­ming the way we see, under­stand, and get around cities? How did they help China, Japan, and Korea miti­gate the worst effects of the coro­na­virus lock­down? What effects will they have on where we live, work and play, and what are the opportu­ni­ties and threats for auto­ma­kers, tech­no­logy ?rms, public tran­sit, em­ployers, and deve­lopers. Draw­ing upon his work with BMW, Intel, MIT, Bloom­berg Philan­thro­pies, Aspen Insti­tute, and New­Cities Foun­da­tion, Greg Lindsay offers a tour of future urban mobi­lity and how they pro­mi­se to transform our cities.

THE FUTURE ISN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE. As the pace of social, techno­logical, and environ­mental change acce­le­ra­tes, orga­ni­za­tions are struggling to make sense of the pre­sent, let alone spot threats and oppor­tu­ni­ties loo­ming just over the horizon. The abi­li­ty to anti­cipate, under­stand, plan for, and inno­vate around uncer­tainty has become a critical skill for designers, inno­va­tors, and stra­te­gists every­where. As com­pu­ting pio­neer Alan Kay once said, “the best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

Greg Lindsay will teach a crash course in exactly that. The practice of crea­ting futures, or “fore­sight,” offers a toolkit and frame­work for de­tec­ting signals of change, organizing insights, syn­the­si­zing possi­ble futu­res, iden­ti­fying poten­tial barriers and opportu­ni­ties, and desig­ning inno­va­tive pro­ducts, ser­vi­ces or ideas that satisfy emer­ging needs. In addi­tion to lectu­ring on possi­ble futures, Greg is availa­ble to lead parti­ci­pants through a fun, fast-paced workshop in which they create futu­res of their own.

HOW DO WE BRING THE RIGHT PEO­PLE and the right ideas to the right place at the right time to create some­thing new, when we don’t know who or where or when that is, let alone what we’re looking for? This is the paradox of inno­vation – new ideas don’t fol­low orga­ni­zational charts or sche­dule them­sel­ves for meetings.

Greg Lindsay describes how orga­nizations like Google, the U.S. Military Academy, United Health Group, and the Inter­na­tional Red Cross are “engine­ering seren­di­pity.” They’re har­nes­sing sen­sors, social net­works, and new ways of work­ing to break down the boun­daries be­twe­en new teams, discover new ideas, inspire colla­bo­ra­tion and crea­ti­vity, and to spur em­ployee enga­ge­ment, learning, and inno­va­tion. How, where, and who we work with will never be the same.