Last fall I moderated a panel on the city of tomorrow at Propmodo's Building the Future event that was part of NYC Real Estate Tech Week. Propmodo is a trade publication focused on the proptech industry. Proptech is heavily concentrated in a few cities like NYC. But if you are in the real estate business, following the proptech world in Propmodo or elsewhere helps give you a sense of the profound change in the real estate business being driven by technology. In the panel we talk about the disconnect between the radically different urban … [Read more...]
Archives for February 2020
How Cities Lost Control of the Urban Revolution (or, Three Generations of Smart Cities)
I was a columnist in the print edition of Governing magazine for about five years. Sadly, the publication closed last year. But the company who owned it has relaunched Governing as an online only publication focused on the intersection of technology and public policy. I'm delighted to be able to contribute to this new platform. My first column is online and is about how cities lost control of the urban tech movement. In I trace three generations of "smart cities," and how while the government was in the drivers seat in the first two, they … [Read more...]
Five Things to Know About the Midwest
Richard Longworth of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and author of the book Caught in the Middle: America's Heartland in the Age of Globalism, just released this short video about the Midwest. If the video player doesn't display for you, click over to watch on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsyiLXQ5Imw&feature=emb_title … [Read more...]
The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side
Sign up for Heartland Intelligence, my monthly research briefing on the greater American Midwest. Chicago is known as one of America's great cities for architecture. But other than the Illinois Institute of Technology campus, designed by Mies van der Rohe, very little of the architecture of the South Side is included in the public's mind when thinking about it. Lee Bey, former architecture critic of the Chicago Sun-Times and a South Side residents, aims to change this with his book Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago's … [Read more...]