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Greg Lindsay        

Expert on Globalization, Cities & Innovation

Greg Lindsay is a generalist, urbanist, futurist, and speaker. He is a non-resident senior fellow of MIT’s Future Urban Collectives Lab, Ari­zo­na State University’s Threat­cast­ing Lab, and the Atlan­tic Council’s Scow­croft Stra­te­gy Ini­tia­tive. He was the foun­ding chief com­mu­nica­tions officer of AlphaGeo and remains a senior advi­sor. Most re­cen­tly, he was a 2022-2023 urban tech fellow at Cor­nell Tech’s Jacobs Insti­tute, where he ex­plo­­red the impli­cations of AI and aug­men­ted rea­lity at urban scale.

Lindsay speaks about the future of cities, mobility, tech­no­logy, security, and work, inclu­ding appea­ran­ces at 10 Down­ing Street, the United States Mili­tary Aca­de­my, San­dia Natio­nal Labo­ra­to­ries, Orga­ni­sa­tion for Eco­no­­mic Co-oper­a­tion and Deve­lop­ment, Har­vard Busi­ness School, MIT Media Lab, and Aspen Ideas Festival.

He also speaks to companies such as Micro­soft, Deloitte, AECOM, Ford and Star­­bucks; orga­ni­za­tions like the U.S. Confe­ren­ce of Mayors and Canada Council for the Arts; mem­ber asso­cia­tions including ULI, NAHB, NAI­OP, SIOR, FIA; and uni­ver­sities such as Harvard, Yale, Prin­ce­ton, NYU, and McGill. He is often cited as an expert by The New York Times, The Washing­ton Post, The Wall Street Jour­­­nal, The Guar­dian, USA Today, CNN, NPR, BBC, and CBC Radio.

Lindsay is also a part­ner at the advi­sory firm Future­Map, and has advi­sed Intel, Sam­sung, IKEA, Audi, Hyun­dai, Tish­man Spe­yer, Brit­ish Land, André Ba­lazs Proper­ties, Aldar, Emaar, and Expo 2020, along with nume­rous G20 govern­­ment entities. Pre­viously, he was urbanist-in-resi­den­ce at BMW MINI’s urban tech acce­le­ra­tor, call­ed URBAN-­X, as well as direc­tor of applied re­search at New­ Cities Foun­da­tion and foun­ding direc­tor of stra­te­gy at its mobi­lity-focused off­shoot Co­Motion. He is the co-author of the critically acclaimed international bestseller "Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next."

Lindsay is a two-time Jeopardy! champion -- and the only human to go undefeated against IBM’s Watson.

Speech Topics

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.

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.

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 be­gin­ning to ask, “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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

The Metaverse Metropolis

The Metaverse Metropolis is a new initiative of the Urban Tech Hub of the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech. Befitting the Hub’s mission to improve people’s lives, train the next generation of urban technologists, and convene cities, companies, and communities to achieve better outcomes, the project aims to build a coalition of municipalities, metaverse builders, designers, legal experts, and citizens to design and deploy industry standards and best practices for public safety in augmented reality environments.

The goal is to define the metaverse equivalent of the traffic light or stop sign — clear, universal signals and infrastructure expressly designed to protect everyone in the public realm, including those in its new virtual dimensions. By starting now and working together to save lives and ground safety at the center of any real-world metaverse, we can begin to lay the foundations for a new generation of computing that is inherently urban.

The Post-Pandemic City

Inoculating the planet: life after COVID-19

While the world awaits a vaccine, how will we inoculate our cities, workplaces, homes, and families against another pandemic? For example, how will fluid organizations balance the mental- and physical health of employees with new remote/office work hybrids? Will social distancing kill mass transit and ridehailing in favor of driving alone — or will cities turn streets over to cyclists, scooters, and pedestrians? How will deliveries, “dark kitchen,” and automation threaten to turn retailing and restaurants inside-out, threatening main streets, mom-and-pops, and real estate as we know it? And where will millennials — now the victims of a second financial crash — choose to raise their children, “Generation C?”

Drawing on his research and foresight work for NewCities, the Atlantic Council, MIT’s Future Urban Collectives Lab, the Bloomberg Philanthropies, and dozens of recent interviews, Greg Lindsay delivers a sweeping view of how the pandemic and resulting economic crash will alter the trajectory of our lives for decades to come.

Length: 45 minutes speaking + 15 minutes Q&A (Tailored to client’s needs)

The Future of Travel, Trade, and Cities

This talk is about how air travel, the Internet, and the urban world are disrupting traditional ways of living and working. This comes out of Greg's 2011 book, "Aerotropolis," and can be taken in any number of directions. Greg has spoken about this subject at length to commercial real estate groups (e.g. CoreNet, NAIOP, the Urban Land Institute), travel groups (Association of Corporate Travel Executives, the Texas Travel Industry Association, the International Luxury Travel Meetings), aviation (Emirates, Boeing, FedEx), and many more.

The Future of Work, Cities, and Serendipity

How will we discover new collaborators and ideas in a world where no one works in the same office anymore? Why is WeWork a $10 billion company? Greg has spoken about these trends at Microsoft, Intel, Ericsson, the U.S. State Department, the Aspen Ideas Festival, the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Institute for the Future, and many others.

The Future of Urban Transportation

Where is Uber, Lyft, autonomous cars, etc. all headed? This talk is drawn from Greg's work at New York University and with the New Cities Foundation in Paris. He has recently given talks on this subject to the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), the Automotive Fleet Leasing Association, the Canadian Automobile Association, Audi, Chrysler, Element Fleet Management, MIT, and others.

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 just 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 the computing pioneer Alan Kay once said, “the best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

Futurist, journalist, author and scholar 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.

Big, Smart, and Green — How Cities Define Our Future

Humans are an urban species — more than half of us now live in cities. And our numbers will double by 2050 to more than 7 billion people, equal to the number alive on Earth right now. Every challenge we face will by definition become an urban one, whether solving poverty, adapting to climate change, finding homes and opportunities for immigrants, creating jobs and growth, and simply how to get around.

Greg Lindsay speaks frequently about the future of cities, most recently at the Atlantic Council, the Urban Land Institute, and the New America Foundation. He directs the Emergent Cities Project at the World Policy Institute, exploring what lessons struggling cities like Detroit can learn from dynamic ones such as Nairobi. His work with Studio Gang Architects on the future of suburbia was displayed at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2012, and he is currently working with OMA/AMO to explore the intersection of the office with the city, the cloud, and Big Data. Popular topics include “smart cities;” urban mobility; cities and immigration; making cities more resilient to climate change, and how work is changing in cities.

The New Geography of Trade, Talent, and Innovation

How did China become the “world’s factory?” Why are Americans checking into Bangkok for heart surgery? How did Africa become a breadbasket for the Middle East? What all of these things have in common is that they were made possible by the world’s explosive growth in air travel. The combination of the Internet and jet engine is redrawing the world map, creating new winners and losers among countries, cities, companies, and all of us. Greg Lindsay, author of Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next, explores the rules, threats, and vast opportunities afforded by the new highways in the sky.

Engineering Serendipity

Innovation can’t be scheduled but it can be designed. Greg Lindsay tells how innovative organizations such as Google, Facebook, Zappos, and MIT are engineering serendipity, harnessing social networks and new ways of working to cultivate the discovery of 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.

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