The latest episodes of the CoMotion Podcast feature Berlin BVG’s Dr. Henrik Haenecke – mastermind of the world’s first public sector-led mobility-as-a-service platform, Jelbi – and Kodiak Robotics co-founder and CEO Don Burnette, who emerged from the ashes of autonomous trucking pioneer Otto (and its disastrous acquisition by Uber) to stake a claim in the space once again. Listen to Haenecke above and Burnette below.

Back in April, the UK’s Department of International Trade invited me to moderate a panel on the future of urban mobility, starring Andy Byford, president of New York City Transit – the man destined to fix my city’s subways – Cubic’s Crissy Ditmore, and drone expert Dr. Anita Sengupta. Click on the video above for a rollicking good time.

I’m back with two new editions of the CoMotion Podcast – one with Metaprop’s Elie Finegold (above) on the intersection of new mobility and real estate (hint: he’s literally betting on increasing access and density) and Curbed urbanism editor Alissa Walker (below) on all things mobility in LA and California. Please give them a listen.

Summer is around the corner, which means the spring speaking season has already come and (mostly) gone. Here’s a quick recap of where I’ve been this year to date, and where I’m headed next.

• The Millennial Metricâ„¢, the New Suburbia, and the future of housing. While it hasn’t been officially announced, I’m currently working on a project with the NewCities Foundation and Ivanhoé Cambridge to develop a “Millennial Metric” predicting where American millennials will likely migrate as they reach middle age and child-rearing. Marrying the qualitative with the quantitative – I spent this spring visiting Denver, Nashville, Washington DC, Dallas-Ft. Worth, and Columbus –  we hope to make a major contribution to understanding of millennials as a cohort. But I’m not waiting until the report is published in June to start disseminating my findings.

In February, I delivered a keynote on “The New Suburbia” at the International Builders Show in Las Vegas, of which you can find (grainy) video here. (I gave a similar talk to SIOR in April, with video here.) I also gave a second talk at IBS on how technology is transforming home construction. (Video of that talk here.)

Related to that subject, I’m curating and hosting a pair of events this summer and fall. First, NewCities is hosting New Housing Solutions in New York in June – a two-day conference and workshop covering everything from the rise of “coliving” to the presidential candidates’ plans on housing policy. Second, I’m returning as the curator of reSITE 2019: REGNERATE in Prague this September. As the title implies, the theme touches upon both urban regeneration, and also generations of urban dwellers – everything from senior housing to millennial family-friendly cities.

Rounding out my city-focused work this spring, I spoke at Institutional Real Estate Investors’ VIP conference back in January (video preview here and recap here), and moderated the opening panel at the 92nd St. Y’s annual “City of Tomorrow” conference in March. (Video here.)

• “Micromobility” and the future of transportation. As the director of strategy for LA CoMotion, mobility is always on mind mind. In April, I delivered the opening keynote at ThinkTransit in Tampa, then ran a workshop on autonomous vehicles for 40+ public transport C-level executives from around the US and Canada. The month before, I moderated a panel organized by the British Consulate in New York starring Andy Byford, the former London and Toronto transit expert trying to fix NYC’s subways.

I also host a podcast series for LA CoMotion – the third edition of which will be held in November, and is expanding to Miami and France – with recent guests including futurist Scott Smith, former venture capitalist David Zipper  WhereismyTransport? CEO Devin de Vries, the New Zealand Transport Authority’s Martin McMullan, and former Baltimore transit chief Paul Comfort.

Zipper and I talked a lot about “micromobility,” i.e. scooters and bicycles, and I moderated a session at the inaugural Micromobility conference in San Francisco in January. (Audio here.)

• “Dark Hammer” and the U.S. Army Cyber Institute. I was at West Point this spring for the launch of “Dark Hammer,” a coffee table book published by the U.S. Army Cyber Institute(!) collecting eight comic books(!!) depicting the grave consequences of future cyber threats. (You can read more about it here.)

• AI & Autonomous Everything Last month, I finally had a chance to speak about artificial intelligence, machine learning, and autonomy to the North American Meat Institute(!), which had more applications than you might think. (The Internet of Cows, anyone?)

• Next up in the docket: “Cities-as-a-Service” for CREtech Trailblazers in June, followed by Procurious in London a few days later, then ULI Florida a few days after that.

Earlier this month, I visited Abu Dhabi at the invitation of Scott Smith, co-founder and managing partner of the foresight firm Changeist. Upon returning from the desert, we dropped by Masdar – the (in)famous zero-carbon experimental prototype community of tomorrow which in ten short years has become just as retro-futuristic as EPCOT itself. Interviewing Scott for the CoMotion podcast and vice versa for Changeist’s own podcast, Underfutures, we discussed ghost smart cities, “mobility spam,” and retrofutures in the cool micro-climate of Masdar. (Cooler than the desert, anyway.) CoMotion podcast above, Underfutures below.

I’m delighted to announce I’ve been invited to return as guest curator of reSITE 2019: REGENERATE in Prague this fall. As the name of this year’s conference implies, our theme not only concerns urban regeneration, but also creating cities for multiple generations, whether re-designing safer cities and streets for seniors to grappling with the challenges facing younger generations, including housing, raising families, and of course, climate change.

Last year’s edition attracted more than 1,200+ guests and 50+ speakers from around the world, with big names such as Jeanne Gang and Sou Fujimoto joining less heralded but brilliant thinkers such as Infinite Detail author Tim Maughan and Apoyo Mutuo Mariana co-founder Christine Nieves.

Please watch this space for more announcements about speakers and programming soon.

Earlier this month, the 92nd St. Y and its partner Hundred Stories invited me to moderate a session at City of Tomorrow, its annual event on the future of New York. Held the day after Hudson Yards opened, it helped us frame a friendly debate over who has the right the remake the city and how. Starring Shin-pei Tsay, Executive Director, Gehl Institute; Paul Whalen, Partner, Robert A.M. Stern Architects; Story Bellows, Partner, CityFi; Luca Ballarini, Founder & Creative Director, Bellissimo and Curator of Torino Stratosferica. Tune in above.

I won’t be able to make it to MadCity 2019 in Riga, but seriously: you should go.

Back in January, I invited myself to host the closing “Capital for Micromobility” panel at the Micromobility conference. The audio from that session has been appended to the latest edition of the Micromobility podcast series, which you can listen to above. Please tune in to listen to me gently mock, in no particular order: scooters, Bird, the trough of disillusionment, the “high priest of Micromobility,” cults, and venture capital in general.

(Last month in Carlsbad, California, Institutional Real Estate, Inc. asked me to speak to a roomful of commercial real estate investors – the men and women who build the world, or at least write the checks to those who do. Here’s a quick recap of my talk by IREI’s Jody Barhanovich.)

(Update: IREI has posted a – retroactive – preview video of my talk here.)

At Institutional Real Estate, Inc.’s 2019 Visions, Insights & Perspectives (VIP) Americas conference in Carlsbad, Calif., in January, the first day’s keynote was presented by Greg Lindsay, an expert on globalization, urbanization and innovation. Lindsay said the city of tomorrow does not depend on large skyscrapers, it depends on people and the way those people spend time inside and outside of work (pubs, bars, coffee shops).

The city of the future will be walkable urban places, where people can “live, work and move.” This is the reason why large cities such as Seattle, San Francisco and New York have so many people; they are walkable. “Cities get better as they get bigger, even through a financial crisis,” explained Lindsay.

Lindsay also discussed the future of mobility, or “micro-mobility,” in the cities of the future. Scooters, bikes, Uber/Lyft and walking will be even more prominent and more utilized than ever before. Linsday noted Uber is in the works of becoming an “all-mobility provider,” where one app will control all forms of transportation. In the future, certain lanes in roads may have toll prices as well due to transportation such as Uber and Lyft congesting the roadways. He even took it a step further and asked, “Instead of a data plan, what about a mobility plan?”

In addition, because of the popularity of Uber and Lyft, there may be a decrease in the need for parking spaces. Lindsay said current parking garages in major cities are already being turned into other assets such as multifamily homes or office buildings.

Lindsay also suggested that we will start to see a rise in co-working, where companies will begin to work with other companies in the same space.

Another topic he touched on was energy usage and storage. Because of issues such as climate change, Lindsay said in the future, each building may be in charge of supplying their own energy through microgrids and solar panels.

Lindsay finished his keynote by explaining what a winning city must have: It must bring people together; provide housing; be walkable and have access to amenities. He concluded the best cities are “locally close and globally connected.”