Cities of Tomorrow: Reimagining Urban Life

The next generation of global competitiveness will be won — or lost — in the design, financing, and stewardship of the world’s cities. Georgetown alumni discuss what that means for infrastructure, investment strategies, and emerging technologies.

Recognizing this shift, Georgetown McDonough’s Steers Center for Global Real Assets has broadened its focus from commercial real estate to global real assets, an integrated view that brings together the built environment, the infrastructure that supports it, and the energy systems that power it.

To explore how these systems are reshaping cities — from how they’re designed to how they’re financed, powered, and reimagined — Georgetown Business convened a conversation, led by Steers Center Director Matthew Cypher, with alumni working across the real asset landscape: Paula Bejarano (MBA’18), senior vice president of business development and sales at Benteler Mobility, who is helping deploy autonomous electric mobility systems designed for shared urban transportation; Katherine McElroy (B’04), managing director of infrastructure debt investments at the Paris-based firm Infranity; and Roger Weber (MSF’18), urban planning leader and founder, New Cities Atlas, who has across multiple companies overseen the planning and design of cities around the world.

Together, they offer insights into one of the defining questions of this century: How to rethink cities and sustain ecosystems at a scale the world has never attempted before.