Predicting Our Future

Predicting Our Future


Episode 3: Google, China, & Overnight Cities

March 15, 2017

If a trillion dollar market opportunity exists, you can bet the people at Google are thinking about it. Within X, Google’s most secretive lab, they’ve been working on solving the problem of how to make building construction more efficient in order to deal with the world’s severe and worsening urban housing shortage. By the year 2050, the global population is expected to grow by 2.2 billion people, and 90% of that growth is expected to take place in cities that are in dire need of new housing. In China, one company has figured out how to deal with this challenge by prefabricating components for skyscrapers inside of a factory. In the third episode of a series on the future of homebuilding, Andrew interviews some of the most ambitious people figuring out how to make urban housing more efficient, including Jen Carlile of Flux, Zhang Yue of Broad Group, and Professor Austin Williams.