San Diego and Brussels ULI conferences

Laura attended the Urban Land Institute Spring Meeting in San Diego and the Summer European Conference in Brussels. The San Diego conference was about ten times bigger than the European Conference, but they were both equally interesting.

The conferences offered a number of talks on different aspects of Real Estate. Laura attended a full day of talks and was also busy with the Healthcare and Life Science Product Council's specialist subforums of which she is an active member.

In San Diego Dr. Parag Khanna, Managing Partner of FutureMap, and author of Connectography: Mapping the Future of Civilization which forecasts high-growth cities and emerging infrastructures, presented his research on reprogramming geography for the next mobile generation. His research results were challenging and a little scary, yet very eye opening. This image shows countries in red where people will migrate from to find better climatic conditions elsewhere.

Thimon De Jong’s keynote speech in Brussels focussed on GenZ, a generation that, following lockdowns, is even more anxious and angry about the planet, politicians and the future. One of the positive things we discovered during lockdowns is the importance of human relationships and we believe the older generation can support young architects by creating and building teams that work together in person, not remotely. 

We were flexible about how we should organise ourselves post lockdowns, but in fact we all wanted to come together as soon as we were allowed, and our Studio has been a busy, energetic and growing working environment since.