Urbanist, Futurist, Speaker
GREG LINDSAY

TOPICS


Looking for a speaker who can help you make sense of the New/­Post/Never-Normal?



GREG LINDSAY regularly speaks to the world’s most inno­va­tive organi­za­tions about the future of cities, cli­ma­te, work, AI, and the future of the futu­re itself.

He speaks to com­pa­nies (Micro­soft, Deloitte, AECOM, Ford, Star­bucks), orga­ni­za­tions (U.S. Confe­ren­ce of Mayors, Cana­da Council for the Arts), mem­ber asso­cia­tions (ULI, NAHB, NAI­OP, SIOR, FIA) and uni­ver­sities (Harvard, Yale, Prince­­ton, NYU, McGill).


Below is a list of his speaking topics. If any pique your interest, email him. After all, there’s no time to think about the future like the present.




UPCOMING TALKS
PROVOCATION IDEAS FESTIVAL
STRATFORD, ON
11.28.2024

BENESCH LAW
NEW YORK, NY
12.05.2024
AICPA-CIMA
LAS VEGAS, NV
12.09.2024

ULI NEW MEXICO
ALBUQUERQUE, NM
01.09.2025
FSU/ROLLINS
WINTER PARK, FL
01.23.2025

SUSTAINABLE PACKAGING SUMMIT
SEATTLE, WA
04.29.2025




The Way We’ll Live Next

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.



KEYNOTE –
DLA PIPER
The Way We’ll Live Next

KEYNOTE –
CENTRAL HOUSTON

The Future of Downtowns

KEYNOTE –
AECOM GLOBAL
LEADERSHIP
A Century of Cities




Autonomous Everything

THE ROBOTS ARE COMING – not to steal your job, but to invent enti­rely new ones. Recent advances in arti­fi­cial 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, 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.


PODCAST –
NAIOP
Inside CRE

PANEL MODERATION –
FAST COMPANY

The Age of Principled AI

REPORT –
CORNELL TECH

The Future
of Generative AI





Where Will You Live in 2050?

NEARLY HALF OF AMERICANS were vic­tims of a climate disas­ter last year – whether fire, 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 asking, “Where should I live some­day?”

Fortu­na­tely, we have answers.

Com­bi­ning cli­mate scien­ce with demo­gra­phics and using arti­ficial 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.



PODCAST –
CLIMATE DEMOCRACY INITIATIVE

Heatwaves of Change

ESSAY –
BLOOMBERG CITYLAB

The Line Is Blurring
Between Remote Workers
and Tourists

ESSAY – ALPHAGEO
Which Zoomtowns are
Tomorrow’s Boomtown?




How to Work, Together

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.



ARTICLE –
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

Workspaces That
Move People

KEYNOTE –
WORLDWIDE ERC

Global Workforce
Symposium




Where the Robot Meets the Road

A DECADE AGO, self-driving cars were science fiction 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 firms, 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.


ESSAY - RENEWING THE DREAM
“Something New Under the Sun”

REPORT –
BLOOMBERG CITYLAB

The State of Play

REPORT –
NEW CITIES FOUNDATION

Now Arriving




The Future of the Future

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.




Engineering Serendipity

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.


TALK – RESITE

Planning Cities Around
the Known Unknowns

OP-ED –
THE NEW YORK TIMES

Engineering Serendipity