Explore the latest news and trends shaping the next chapter of urban development and city life.
You Should Know
- Big banks are rolling out enormous infrastructure financing initiatives. Morgan Stanley announced a $1.5 trillion U.S. Innovation Infrastructure Initiative to fund innovation platforms and strategic industries, and Bank of America followed with its Critical Infrastructure Finance Initiative, which will inject $250 billion into data centers, energy, and critical minerals.
- Wind and solar are now consistently outproducing gas-fired generation in Europe in 2026, per Reuters. Renewable capacity has grown to nearly 750 GW, up from under 20 GW two decades ago.
- DeFlock is a crowdsourced map of automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras Over 125,000 have been mapped. Read more about the Flock Safety camera debate below.
- Project Sunroof lets you search for your home and get a personalized estimate of your solar savings potential. Using Google Earth imagery, it analyzes your roof, sun exposure, and local weather to calculate how much solar energy it could generate.
Worth Watching
- AI’s newest buildings are already obsolete.
- See Shanghai’s Sky Garden: 1,000 trees and 400 steps of architectural wonder.
- Why American houses are so flimsy.
Top Stories
A Primer on the Flock Camera Debate
Flock Safety cameras — automated license plate readers (ALPRs) deployed by police departments as well as on residential and commercial properties — are arguably the most contentious smart-city technology rolled out at scale.
The cameras now number more than 120,000 across nearly every U.S. state, and Flock holds contracts with more than 7,000 law enforcement agencies, about 40 percent of U.S. departments, as well as over 5,000 private-sector customers.
Flock, founded in 2017 and now valued at more than $8 billion, began selling to HOAs before moving into policing in 2020. Cities typically pay around $3,000 per camera annually.
Proponents point to several benefits:
- Crime-solving at scale. Flock says its cameras help solve 700,000 to 1 million crimes a year, roughly 10 to 25 percent of U.S. reported crime, and have helped locate more than 10,000 missing people.
- Specific recoveries. Police cite concrete cases, such as tracking down a stolen car with a baby inside. The system also sends real-time alerts for wanted vehicles, active warrants, and hit-and-runs.
- A narrow legal footprint. The cameras capture only what’s already visible in public — no video, no facial recognition — similar to plate readers the NYPD has used since 2006. More than 40 courts have ruled that fixed ALPRs don’t violate the Fourth Amendment.
- Built-in accountability. Flock says agencies own their data, every search requires a documented reason and creates a permanent audit trail, and images are deleted after a short retention window.
Critics raise a different set of concerns:
- High error rates. The ACLU says roughly 1 in 10 scanned plates are misread. That tracks with an on-the-ground example: a Roseville, Calif., police department analysis of nearly 1,500 Flock reports from 2023–2024, reported by CNET, found a 71 percent failure rate in matching plate numbers correctly.
- Warrantless mass surveillance. Flock cameras log every vehicle’s make, model, plate, and location into a searchable database, letting police trace movements without a warrant, often sharing data across agencies with little oversight. Critics say this enables passive surveillance of everyone, not just suspects — especially as HOAs deploy them too.
- Documented misuse. Reported cases include officers tracking romantic partners, police pursuing a journalist over a critical op-ed, and ICE/CBP reportedly accessing the data for immigration enforcement.
- Security lapses. U.S. lawmakers have petitioned the Federal Trade Commission to probe Flock over systemic credential security failures. Security reports highlighted dozens of compromised user accounts.
The backlash is translating into contract cancellations. The Los Angeles Police Department ended its Flock agreement last month, and more than 50 U.S. cities and counties have cut ties with the company over the past year.
In response, after reports that more than 50 officers were accused of or charged with misusing Flock’s cameras, CEO Garrett Langley announced the company will require agencies to activate audit and suspension features by year-end, let agencies restrict the offense types other agencies can search for, and cut data retention from 30 to 7 days.
Look to Central Florida to See the Future of Transportation
Central Florida is fast becoming a real-world proving ground for the next generation of transportation.
Last week, Florida announced that it will begin testing electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft by the end of 2026 at SunTrax, a state facility in Auburndale. The 775-acre facility in Polk County was originally built to test autonomous vehicles. SunTrax has since expanded to include advanced air mobility (AAM) testing and is now home to the nation’s first dedicated AAM Aerial Test Track, giving companies a controlled environment to test aircraft and communications technology under real-world conditions.
SunTrax also includes the only high-speed autonomous vehicle test track in the Southeastern United States, where simulated weather, urban environments, and pedestrian crossings are used to evaluate emerging technologies before they reach wider deployment.
Earlier this year, Florida was specially selected by the Federal Aviation Administration to help lead national safety and operational policy development for eVTOL and AAM technology through the agency’s Integration Pilot Program, with supporting research conducted by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
Autonomous vehicles are already on Central Florida’s roads, too. Waymo has logged hundreds of thousands of trips in the state, offers fully autonomous rides in Orlando, and is preparing to launch commercial robotaxi service in Tampa this fall.
Volkswagen’s mobility brand Moia is also expanding into the region. In April 2026, it announced a partnership with Orlando-based Beep to deploy autonomous ID. Buzz AD shuttles equipped with Mobileye self-driving technology, with validation testing already underway in the Lake Nona community.
Orlando itself is home to a separate transportation initiative taking shape in the historic Parramore neighborhood. The Green District Smart City master plan has been filed with the City of Orlando, marking the first formal step toward a roughly $2 billion redevelopment that will combine electric vehicles, advanced air mobility, and housing within a single connected district.
The project will be anchored by two Smart Hub parking structures at 17 N. Westmoreland Drive and 320 W. Clear Lake Street, combining retail, multimodal transit, and EV charging, along with a third facility supporting health, wellness, and emergency response.
The development group has selected Eve Air Mobility as its preferred eVTOL aircraft provider and i-charging USA as its preferred charging technology partner.
Groundbreaking is expected in summer 2027, funded through a combination of local and national investors, community groups, and local incentives.
Thermal Energy Networks Could Cool NYC’s Hottest Subway Stops
New York City is moving forward with an effort to determine whether heat trapped on some of the subway system’s hottest platforms can be captured and reused to warm nearby buildings in winter.
The city has announced plans to explore a Thermal Energy Network, or TEN, at the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall 4/5/6 and Chambers Street J/Z station complex. If built, it would be the first such system installed in a U.S. transit system.
A TEN is a shared underground piping loop that moves heat between buildings instead of having each one generate its own heat, typically by burning gas, or dump its own waste heat into the air, the way a standard air conditioner does. Buildings connected to the loop can draw heat out in winter or send excess heat into it in summer, letting “hot” buildings and “cold” buildings effectively trade energy.
Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall 4/5/6 is one of the hottest stations in the system, with average summer temperatures reaching 96 degrees Fahrenheit in 2025; officials note some stations run up to 20 degrees hotter than the temperature outside.
Under the proposed system, radiant cooling technology would draw heat from the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall platforms — and potentially Chambers Street — and send it through pipes to geothermal boreholes, deep vertical wells drilled beneath the abandoned center platform at Chambers Street. There, the heat would be stored underground and drawn back out to warm nearby buildings once the weather turns cold, effectively making the boreholes a heat battery made of rock and soil.
Because the system moves heat rather than generating or destroying it through combustion, it can be markedly more efficient than separate heating and cooling systems; radiant cooling alone can be 25 to 35 percent more energy efficient than conventional air conditioning.
TENs are already in use elsewhere, including at hospitals and universities, where they cut reliance on fossil fuels by sharing heat across a campus rather than having each building produce its own.
A notable recent TEN implementation is Eversource’s pilot in Framingham, Massachusetts, the first utility-run networked geothermal system in the country. Along a one-mile underground loop, the network connects 36 residential and commercial buildings, including MassBay Community College and a local fire station, serving roughly 140 customer accounts.
A contract for the subway station TEN feasibility study is expected to be awarded this fall, with design work starting in early 2027 if the geothermal approach is viable.
One Firm Is Building an Entire New City in Iraq
A massive new development, Bismayah New City, is taking shape on the outskirts of Baghdad. The project is the world’s largest single-developer city-building effort, with South Korea’s Hanwha Corporation E&C Division overseeing everything from design and materials procurement to construction under a contract with Iraq’s National Investment Commission.
The scale is substantial. The plan calls for 100,000 housing units across 1,830 hectares, eventually housing 600,000 people. The residential area is split into eight districts, labeled A through H, ranging from 9,480 to 15,240 units each, surrounding a central zone with offices, markets, mosques, and green space.
Beyond housing, the government infrastructure includes high-tech water treatment and sewage treatment plants, as well as a modern road network linking the new city to Baghdad.
Awarded to Hanwha in 2012, the project has been described as the biggest city development project in Iraqi history and the largest overseas construction project in Korea’s history.
Hanwha completed 30,000 homes before work stopped in September 2020, after Iraq fell behind on payments. Work resumed in February 2024, after Hanwha received a portion of the $629 million it was owed.
Hanwha Engineering & Construction has since signed a revised contract worth $10.4 billion, with completion targeted for 2032, pending approval from Iraq’s Council of Ministers. As of the most recent update, house construction stood at about 45% complete.
The engineering behind the build is notable in its own right. Hanwha built 18 factories to supply its own materials, including what it calls the world’s largest precast concrete plant, plus plants for PHC piles, PVC windows and pipes, road tiles, and asphalt. Construction uses the precast method: factory-made pillars, beams, slabs, and walls are shipped to the site, a method Hanwha says improves quality and speeds construction.
Bismayah’s residential buildings follow a distinctive U-shaped design. Each is 10 stories tall, with an elevator and parking inside the “U,” and is surrounded by green space, with walkways connecting it to neighboring buildings.
Beneath the city’s 6-to-8-lane surface roads runs a 20-kilometer underground utility tunnel, known as a concrete gallery network, carrying the communication and electrical lines around the entire circumference of the development. Because those lines run underground rather than overhead, the city has an unobstructed view both inside and outside its boundaries.
Korean officials say Bismayah New City could open the door for Korean firms on other Iraqi infrastructure work, including Iraq’s broader $17 billion railway and road network plans.
Big Deals
- Nvidia creates innovative $500B AI-financing vehicle with Wall Street firms.
- Archer buys former rival Wisk Aero.
- Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners closes $3B fund targeting large-scale energy infrastructure projects.
- Ari Emanuel’s Mari takes over Broadway and West End theater giant ATG for $6B.
- Brookfield and SWI Group form $694M multifamily JV.
- GO Residential REIT buys H&R REIT for $4.8B.
- Nuclea Energy snaps up Moltex Energy’s advanced nuclear technology assets.
- Purvah Green Power acquires 1.4 GW portfolio from Renew Solar for about $500M.
- Ryman Hospitality buys Grande Lakes Orlando Resort for $1.4B, the largest transaction on record for a non-gaming U.S. resort.
- Yulu raises $93M as quick-commerce boom in India fuels e-bike demand.
Extra Reads
- Penta to lead Prague’s €3.7B regeneration project, converting a 25-hectare brownfield site into a mixed-use district.
- Oman unveils agricultural city of Al Najd, 45 square kilometers of farmland, greenhouses, and housing.
- Smart rain sensors are shaping the future of connected cities.
- Villanova opens new campus after taking over failed Cabrini University.
- Seoul debuts 3D maps for urban planning, the first among Korean cities.
- Latin America’s fastest bullet train is under construction.
- Lisbon approves Matinha megaproject in Marvila, bringing hundreds of homes and riverside green space.
- NSW Government reveals blueprint to fit an extra 1.3M people into Sydney.
- Trump’s White House construction projects to cost nearly $1B.
- Fermi America announces its first tenant, TensorWave, in a $6.5B contract.
- Construction gets underway on $8B UAE high-speed rail project.
- Governments could use eminent domain to seize your land for AI data centers.
- Elon Musk’s Terafab becomes the world’s largest new building.