ATLANTA, GA – On August 14, 2026, the Council for Quality Growth hosted more than 550 attendees at the Sandy Springs Performing Arts Theater in City Springs for its 6th annual The INTERSECTION Quality Development Conference. This event is product of the Quality Growth Institute, the education arm of the Council. The INTERSECTION convened public policy and private business leaders from across the region to discuss critical issues facing metro Atlanta. The 2026 theme “The AI Era of the Built Environment is Here” set the stage for timely conversations about the technologies reshaping the future of development and land use. Doug Hooker, former Executive Director of the Atlanta Regional Commission, served as master of ceremonies.
Greg Lindsay, Urbanist-in-Residence at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities and two-time Jeopardy champion, delivered the opening keynote on Friday. He spoke on a paper he’s written titled “Chain Drain,” and presented his highly researched theories about the built environment and its resistance to learning and innovation. Lindsay described how fragmentation across the industry has created a system in which each part of the building process operates independently, ultimately limiting collaboration and learning. “The building industry is self-optimizing for market failure, meaning every link operates in its own silo that solves its own problems, and that, of course, reduces all the back and forth that leads to change orders, RFIs, and so forth and so on,” Lindsay said.
Thank you to our attendees and sponsors for a successful INTERSECTION Quality Development Conference!
