Greg Lindsay Profile Photo

Greg Lindsay

Keynote Speaker

Urban Tech Fellow, Cornell Tech; Senior Fellow, MIT Future Urban Collectives Lab; Non-Resident Senior Fellow, the Atlantic Council’s Foresight, Strategy, and Risks Initiative; Director of Applied Research, NewCities; Author of the international best-seller, Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next

Greg shocks-and-awes audiences with his high-energy, rapid-fire tours of the future, frequently leaving attendees speechless. He weaves insights gleaned from his work with NATO, the United Nations, AI experts, Metaverse architects, and more to explore the ways we’ll live next in an era of both technological abundance and climate catastrophes.

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Greg Lindsay'S SPEAKING FEE Under $25,000

Greg Lindsay Profile Photo

Greg Lindsay is a generalist, urbanist, and futurist. He is the Chief Communications Officer at Climate Alpha, an AI-driven location-analysis platform steering investment toward climate adaptation and more resilient regions. He is also an urban tech fellow at Cornell Tech’s Jacobs Institute, a senior fellow of MIT’s Future Urban Collectives Lab, and a non-resident senior fellow of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Strategy Initiative.  

He’s been cited as an expert on the future of cities, technology, and mobility by The New York TimesThe Washington PostThe Wall Street JournalThe GuardianUSA Today, CNN, NPR, and the BBC. He’s a partner at FutureMap, a geo-strategic and climate advisory firm based in Singapore, and has advised Intel, Samsung, IKEA, Starbucks, Audi, Hyundai, Tishman Speyer, British Land, André Balazs Properties, Aldar, Emaar, and Expo 2020, along with numerous G20 government entities. He was previously the urbanist-in-residence at URBAN-X — BMW MINI’s urban tech accelerator — the Director of Applied Research at NewCities, and founding director of strategy at its mobility-focused offshoot CoMotion.

Greg speaks frequently about cities, mobility, innovation, and globalization, including appearances at 10 Downing Street, the United States Military Academy, Sandia National Laboratories, the OECD, Harvard Business School, the MIT Media Lab, and the Aspen Ideas Festival. His work with Studio Gang Architects on the future of suburbia was displayed at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 2012. His work has also been displayed at the 15th, 16th, and 17th Venice Architecture Biennales, the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, and Habitat III. He sits on the board of CREtech Climate, and was guest curator of the 2018 and 2019 editions of reSITE.

He was previously a contributing writer for Fast Company and Fortune, and an editor-at-large for Advertising Age. He is co-author of the 2011 critically acclaimed international bestseller Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next.

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

Featured Videos

Greg Lindsay Profile Photo
Greg Lindsay

Greg Lindsay on the Future of Work

Greg Lindsay Profile Photo
Greg Lindsay

Greg Lindsay on the Future of Cities

Greg Lindsay Profile Photo
Greg Lindsay

Greg Lindsay on Cities on a Service

Greg Lindsay’s Speech Topics

  • The Big Rethink: Cities After COVID-19

    Downtowns are done. The office is dead. Delivery is the future. At least two of these are wrong – but why? The pandemic may be over, but work-from-anywhere is here to stay. That doesn’t mean the end of the office, but whole new ways of working closer to home and together with more fluid buildings and organizations to match. That, in turn, means rethinking who and what cities are for – forget downtowns vs. suburbs and imagine new uses for empty offices and packed streets. Behind the scenes, technology is turning restaurants and retail inside-out through deliveries, “dark stores” and automation. And above all lurks the threat of climate change and the opportunity of “the Metaverse” to transform the Internet 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 post-pandemic landscape and explains why the future won’t be as socially-distanced as you might think.

  • The Metaverse Metropolis

    “The Metaverse” may be the future, but what is it? While Mark Zuckerberg hopes you’ll never leave your home again, in reality the next generation of the Internet will beckon us outside, into a world in which information is everywhere — if you can see it. Welcome to the real-world metaverse, where you can change reality like changing a channel. How will this change our relationship to each other and to the world? How will these reality channels transform where we live, how we shop, and how we move through enchanted worlds? Drawing on his “Metaverse Metropolis” project at Cornell Tech university, Greg Lindsay offers real advice and lessons from the technologists, designers, and experts building this real-world metaverse.

  • 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.  

Works by Greg Lindsay

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