What do stars, cities, and business events have in common? Each is a fusion reactor of sorts, alternately producing heat and light, or new ideas and connections. That was Greg’s message to the Events Industry Council — the voice of the business events industry on advocacy, research, professional recognition, and standards — in Washington on Global Meetings Industry Day on May 6.

Face-to-face meetings are essential to both business and society, but AI alternately threatens to disrupt (or promises to enhance) it depending on what we value — which more than anything else, is simple connection.

Watch Greg’s keynote

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We’re playing SimCity for real. That was Greg’s message at the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission’s annual State of the Region summit in Columbus to nearly 900 local civic leaders. The game that radicalized a generation of accidental urbanists has been reborn as AI-powered digital twins, generative cities spun up in real time, and AR overlays — the latter of which helped pass Columbus’s 2024 LinkUS transit referendum. But as machine intelligence scales, being together face-to-face becomes even more valuable, not less.

Following the keynote, Greg joined MORPC’s chief strategy officer Joseph Garrity on the Growing Better Together podcast for a wider-ranging conversation on cities and scaling laws, the loneliness epidemic, and what Columbus might learn from Tulsa Remote.

Watch Greg’s keynote
Listen to the podcast

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Greg and his “Unfrozen” podcast co-host Daniel Safarik continued their second century of episodes, including a live report from Dan’s mid-century birthday celebration, along with home-grown cities, the death and life and hoped-for rebirth of gentrification, and Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger on President Trump’s designs on Washington... and beyond.

Listen to episodes:
No. 116 – The Desert of the Real
No. 117 – The Death and Life of Gentrificiation
No. 119 – Mussolini’s Ballroom

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Like many, Greg has marveled at the Urban Land Insti­tute’s transformation from a real estate indus­try asso­cia­tion into an ins­pi­ring force for change through its inter­disci­pli­nary tech­ni­cal assis­tance and advi­sory pro­grams. So, he jump­ed at the chance to speak to ULI’s Global Gover­ning Trus­tees in Washing­ton about what ULI could become, thanks to CEO Angela Cain’s ambi­tious “Future­scape 2035” cam­paign.

Invi­ted to speak briefly about the trends sha­ping the built envi­ron­­ment over the next decade, Greg settled on two—Big Tech’s over­wee­ning desire to divide and con­quer us, and the shock(s) of cli­mate change. Both chal­len­ges demand new forms of civic- and social infra­struc­ture as well as the phy­si­cal kind, and he hopes ULI mem­bers will have a strong role to play in that as well.

He’ll revisit this theme in his closing keynote at the ULI Florida Sum­mit at the end of February.

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What would you do if con­fron­ted with an AI doppel­gänger? That’s what Greg was up against in January at Think No More, a threat­cast­ing fore­­sight work­shop host­ed at the McCain Insti­tute in Wash­ing­­ton, D.C.

At lunch, futur­ist and prank­ster Harmon Leon drafted Greg into one of his paten­ted AI vs. Human Roast Battles, in which he was forced to lyri­cally con­front an AI of him­self trained on his voice and past talks. It was a vivid exam­­ple of the work­shop’s themes around human agency, insti­tu­tions, and con­trol in an era of agen­tic AI—subjects that will conti­nue to domi­nate the years to come.

Watch Greg battle his AI doppelganger

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Henley & Partners invited Greg to contribute to the Henley Glo­bal Mobi­lity Report 2026, in which he warn­ed about the dangers posed by the com­bi­na­tion of AI, personal data, and increas­ingly strict scrutiny of travelers by sovereign nations.

Citing past foresight work for the U.S. Secret Service, he ex­plo­red how a U.S. Customs and Border Protec­tion pro­po­sal to collect social media data and per­so­nal infor­ma­tion from foreign travel­ers may some­day be wea­po­nized against them. Greg was sub­se­quently quoted by Condé Nast Traveler on how Ame­ri­can travel­ers should expect the same.

“Americans’ ease of travel is already a bar­gain­ing chip in the Trump admin­is­tration’s brass-knuckle nego­tia­tions with foreign govern­ments,” says Greg Lindsay, senior fellow at MIT’s Future Urban Collectives Lab and an expert on globa­li­za­tion and trans­por­tation policy. “It’s rea­sonable to expect Americans to be caught in a geo­political tug-of-war for the foreseeable future.”

Read his essay for Henley & Partners
Read his quote in Condé Nast Traveler

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Nearly a decade ago, Greg was the found­­ing director of strategy at CoMotion—a first-of-its-kind confe­rence and fes­ti­val cele­brating the future of urban mobility. He retur­ned in Decem­­ber to co-host and key­note the inau­gu­ral global edi­tion in Riyadh, which convened more than 100 mayors from across the Global South to share poli­cies and forge partnerships.

In addition to co-hosting the main stage, Greg delivered a key­note on “The Aug­men­ted City” and moderated a dis­cus­sion on AI and “sentient cities” with Venice Archi­tec­ture Biennale cura­­tor Carlo Ratti and for­mer president of Costa Rica Carlos Alva­rado Quesada.

Watch Greg’s keynote
Watch Greg’s panel on “sentient cities”

For a second consecutive year, Greg was invited to contri­­bute to Emer­ging Trends in Real Estate—the annual flag­ship pub­li­­ca­tion by PwC and the Urban Land Institute—this time under the head­ing of “From Prop­tech to PropOS: The Emer­­gence of Real Estate’s Auto­nomous Future.”

Combi­ning contem­po­ra­neous exam­ples with spe­­cu­­lative uses of AI “agents” and “digital twins,” he describes how arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence pro­mises to glue toge­ther dis­pa­rate sys­­tems. Will the coming year prove him right, or wrong?

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“The Screen Killed the City” was the title of Greg’s talk at WRLD­CTY in Van­cou­ver. Wea­ving toge­ther the lone­li­ness epi­de­mic, screen addict­ion, quick com­merce, “AI” slop, and his re­port The Aug­­men­ted City, he argued the phy­si­cal world is be­co­ming vesti­gial to the digi­tal one. The task for urbanists, he argued, is to create new public and private spa­ces where being toge­ther with other people is more attrac­tive than being alone with our phones.

He expanded on this thesis on the Challen­gers Cities podcast with Iain Mont­gomery: “Greg doesn’t warm up to get going, he sorta just deto­nates, in both our podcast chat, as well as his keynote.”

“‘We’ve built an environment,’ said Greg, ‘where people are spend­­­ing more of their real lives in inte­rior spaces with the digital world’.” 

Watch the keynote
Listen to the podcast