Bio

After spending my first professional decade writing about media, technology, travel, and design, my book “Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next” led to a refined focus on the future of cities, mobility, work, and innovation. Time Magazine’s Pico Iyer called my book “dazzling,” The New Yorker’s Nicholas Lemann found it “enthralling,” and Bloomberg BusinessWeek pronounced it a “fascinating and important work.” I’ve since researched, consulted, and spoken at length about the intersection of cities and remote work, the pandemic, climate change, “the Metaverse,” innovation, immigration, and mobility. Recent projects have explored the “Millennial dilemma” as the generation reaching middle age selects where to purchase homes and raise families; how augmented reality at scale will transform cities as thoroughly as smartphones did; how all-in-one “super apps” are already transforming banking, e-commerce, and transportation in the Global South; and how climate change and migration will transform cities, regions, and nations. Past speaking engagements include 10 Downing St., the U.S. State Department, the United States Military Academy, Sandia National Laboratories, the OECD, Harvard Business School, the MIT Media Lab, and numerous public- and private universities. I’ve also advised such companies as Intel, Samsung, Starbucks, IKEA, Audi, Chrysler, Tishman Speyer, British Land, and André Balazs Properties, along with numerous G20 government entities. My work with Studio Gang Architects on the future of suburbia was displayed in 2012 at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and other works have been displayed at the 15th, 16th, and 17th Venice Architecture Biennales, the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, and Habitat III. Following a stint in Montréal as the director of applied research at NewCities, I’ve since returned to New York as an urban tech fellow at Cornell Tech’s Jacobs Urban Tech Hub — where I lead “The Metaverse Metropolis” initiative — while acting as the chief communications officer of Climate Alpha and maintaining my ties as a senior fellow at MIT’s Future Urban Collectives Lab and a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Strategy Initiative.