Lightbox PRISM 2022

I was delighted to deliver the opening keynote at the Lightbox PRISM 2022 conference last month on how “software is eating commercial real estate” (and the world, of course). One of my topics was climate change — as you might expect given my work for Climate Alpha. As it turns out, I was only the first among many speakers to raise the subject. From Lightbox’s recap of the event:

In a keynote presentation, Greg Lindsay, chief communications officer of Climate Alpha, a location analysis platform steering governments and investments towards more climate-resilient geographies, discussed how post-pandemic trends and climate change are reshaping the work environment. Lindsay shared that now is an opportune time for us to reimagine what cities and real estate should be. An estimated 40 percent of Americans suffered from some form of climate disaster last year, whether flooding or hurricanes or wildfires or wildfire smoke damaging the air quality in places like the Pacific Northwest and the Rockies near Colorado. Fortunately, technology has given us powerful tools to deal with climate change. 

Changing work habits are affecting the planet. Six times more people are working at home than before the pandemic, and that can’t happen without massive ramifications for the built environment. We’re seeing the rise of new real estate trends, such as individuals who need more space moving into single-family rentals because multifamily can’t accommodate them—and because the U.S. never built enough new homes after the financial crash.

Read the rest here.