On October 16, 2025, a select group of leaders will gather for STRATA, a summit co-hosted by HqO and the MIT Center for Real Estate
What Comes After the Built World We Inherited?
This October, Dominic Endicott will join leaders at the STRATA Real Estate Summit at MIT for the panel “City Retrofits: Legacy Infrastructure, Future Vision.”
This session tackles one of the defining challenges of our time: how do we reimagine cities when 30% of U.S. office buildings—worth more than $1.1 trillion—face obsolescence? For Dominic, the answer is not just retrofitting structures, but rethinking the very systems that shape them.
Why This Conversation Matters Now
Cities and towns are under converging pressures: rising housing costs, demographic shifts, climate adaptation, and strained infrastructure—all while technology accelerates. AI, robotics, and digital platforms are transforming economies faster than cities can adapt. Dominic believes this moment is a narrow but powerful window to design places that expand human potential rather than constrain it.
Interpreting STRATA’s Core Question
When asked, “What comes after the built world we inherited?”, Dominic points to his work on Knowledge Towns. The industrial model of separating work, housing, learning, and health no longer fits. What follows are Knowledge Neighborhoods—ecosystems where universities, startups, advanced manufacturing, and community life are interwoven. Compact, agile, and replicable, they offer a strategy for unlocking prosperity quickly and inclusively.
The Role of Technology
Dominic emphasizes that technology—especially AI, robotics, and digital twins—is not only a productivity engine but a design partner. It can simulate, optimize, and personalize cities, repurpose data center energy for communities, and accelerate modular housing. But for this innovation to succeed, it must be embedded in walkable, livable, human-centered places.
The Opportunity and the Challenge
The opportunity is to align urban prosperity with human potential, creating places that attract talent, spark startups, and provide affordable housing with integrated wellness. The challenge is pace and scale: millions of new homes, tens of millions of square feet of innovation space, and trillions in upgraded infrastructure—requiring new financial stacks that reward long-term value creation.
About Dominic Endicott
Dominic is co-author of Knowledge Towns: Colleges and Universities as Talent Magnets (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023). A venture investor and strategist, he has scaled companies to $800M exits and led U.S. operations for Nauta Capital, a $500M global venture firm. Today, he’s focused on building Knowledge Towns across New England and globally—channeling billions into micro-innovation districts that redefine how prosperity is created and shared.
STRATA — Where the Built World Meets What’s Next
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