Greg Lindsay

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 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.