Built Environment & Cities
Roads, bridges, ports, levees, buildings, data centers. Can a city still move people and goods when a bridge closes, or keep buildings functional through heat and storms?
2026 Theme
Resilience.
How the systems we depend on behave when things stop going to plan — and what it takes for builders, operators, and institutions to design for that.
Resilience is the through-line for Progression Sessions in 2026. Infrastructure is trying to adapt to a different climate while staying in service. Teams are running the car at highway speed. Leaders are carrying long-term responsibility while investors, boards, and politics push on short-term attention. The question is whether the systems you are part of can take a hit, learn, and adjust — or whether they quietly accumulate fragility until something snaps.
The theme gives shape to the year. Individual conversations still start where you are.
Introduction
Resilience is how a system behaves when things stop going to plan. We already speak in metaphors: changing wheels while the car moves, swapping engines mid-flight. That is not mismanagement; it is reality.
We live inside systems that rarely shut down neatly. If a system lacks resilience, it breaks. If key elements are missing — information, buffers, options, relationships — it degrades quietly.
Even resilient designs sit in worlds that shift: climate, markets, regulation, culture. The work is not to make things unbreakable; it is learning to see the systems we are in and changing them in flight.
"The work is not to make things unbreakable; it is learning to see the systems we are in and changing them in flight."
Where Resilience Shows Up
Different domains, same question: when the system is hit hard, does it snap, stall, or reorganize and keep going?
Transportation & Logistics
Supply chains, transit networks, freight corridors. When a port backs up or a route closes, how does the broader system reroute, absorb the shock, and recover?
Climate & Resilience
Harbors, shorelines, fisheries, coastal cities. How do ports and communities adapt to sea-level rise and frequent storms? Where do nature-based defenses meet hard infrastructure and policy?
Ocean & Maritime
Fisheries, shipping, offshore energy, coastal economies. Systems exposed to climate, geopolitics, and physical environment simultaneously — with limited margin for failure.
Energy Systems
Generation, transmission, distribution, storage, and demand. What happens when a substation fails or demand spikes? Can critical loads keep running with microgrids, storage, or demand response?
Economic Systems
Households, regions, sectors. How quickly do jobs, income, and tax bases recover after a shock? Does one sector's failure take down everything, or can the economy re-route?
Institutional & Civic
Companies and agencies shifting priorities, capital, and talent while staying on mission. Communities, institutions, and the trust between them. When something breaks, who talks to whom?
Individual
Each person's system: health, habits, relationships, money, time. Under stress, what collapses first? Where is there slack versus constant brinkmanship?
Why focus on resilience this season?
- Infrastructure and coastal projects trying to adapt to a different climate, but stuck between rigid rules, slow permitting, and short-term budgets.
- Teams and organizations operating under constant change while running the car at highway speed.
- Leaders carrying long-term responsibility while boards, investors, and politics push short-term attention spans.
Resilience is the through-line: whether the systems you are part of can take a hit, learn, and adjust, or quietly accumulate fragility until something snaps.
Thought-starter questions for the season
- What system are you actually trying to make more resilient, and who else is inside it with you?
- Where does this system currently bend, and where does it snap?
- If one key element failed tomorrow — a partner, budget line, site, leader — what would actually happen next?
- What hidden buffers do you already have (relationships, assets, informal workarounds) and how could you strengthen them on purpose?
- Where are you over-optimized for efficiency and under-built for slack or redundancy?
- If this worked, what pattern could others copy in another city, sector, or team?
You do not need polished answers. The point is to have a place to say, "Here is how my system behaves when things go sideways," and work from there.
A note on the conversations themselves
The theme frames the year, not the conversation. Sessions start from wherever you are: a decision you are sitting on, a project that has stalled, something you are trying to move.
Most conversations find their way to a moment of failure or improvisation — something that didn't hold, something you rebuilt on the fly. That is not a detour. It is usually where the most useful material is.
Request a Working Conversation.
The theme shapes the questions. Your work shapes the conversation.
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