Capital and scale alone don't create places where people want to live.
Each July, industries pause to ask whether the tools they have built are still equal to the problems they face. In Australian real estate, that reckoning has arrived with particular force: cities are growing more expensive, construction is too slow, and the old sequence of land, capital, approval, and build no longer closes the gap. Urbanity-26, convening at The Star Gold Coast from July 22 to 24, has gathered developers, financiers, technologists, and designers who are each wagering on a different answer — scale, automation, modular speed, or the quieter power of places people actually want to inhabit.
- Australian cities are becoming less affordable and harder to build at pace, and the industry's traditional playbook is visibly straining under the pressure.
- A $14.6 billion development portfolio, a real estate credit platform that grew from $200 million to $2.5 billion in six years, and a modular construction method claiming 40% faster delivery all signal that capital and process are being radically rethought.
- Technology is no longer peripheral — a real-time digital twin of Brisbane's CBD, autonomous robotics research, and EV infrastructure embedded directly into buildings suggest the city itself is becoming a managed platform.
- Human-centered design and lifestyle integration are being positioned as serious economic arguments, not aesthetic ones, with boutique developments and Olympic-legacy green grids offered as evidence that place quality drives long-term value.
- The conference frames institutional residential capital as a potential structural solution to housing affordability, a proposition that would reshape who builds homes in Australia and how.
Australia's real estate industry is converging on the Gold Coast this July to confront a question that has grown harder to avoid: how do you build cities faster, smarter, and at scale when the old methods are no longer working? Urbanity-26, running July 22 to 24 at The Star Gold Coast, has assembled developers, financiers, technologists, and designers who are each pursuing a different answer.
On the supply side, Gurner Group's Rob Clarke brings a $14.6 billion portfolio and a pipeline of more than 11,000 homes across five cities, including a $2.75 billion Docklands precinct and an $800 million Sydney tower. His argument is that luxury development, done at genuine scale, can move the needle on housing supply. The financing of that supply is being reshaped by MA Financial's Cathy Houston, whose real estate credit platform grew from $200 million to $2.5 billion since 2019 — a trajectory that reflects where institutional capital is flowing even as geopolitical risk and interest rate volatility complicate the picture.
Scale and capital, though, don't by themselves create places people want to live. Urbis partner Glen Power has spent 25 years designing Queensland's public realm and is now a leading advocate for the Green Grid legacy of the Brisbane 2032 Olympics. Jason Dunn left a Goldman Sachs and Commonwealth Bank career to build boutique developments in Byron Bay, and his argument — that human-centered design retains people in ways that density alone cannot — will share a panel with Power's.
The technological transformation of city-building is represented across several sessions. QUT robotics director Michael Milford will open the conference with a keynote on autonomous agents reshaping urban life. Russell Vine's team at Cross River Rail has already built a real-time digital twin of Brisbane's CBD, fusing construction data, geographic information, and gaming engine technology into what is becoming a long-term planning platform for the Queensland government. Meanwhile, Luke Rust's company Ollo embeds shared EV fleets and micromobility directly into buildings, and Nas Jafari has spent 15 years solving the specific problem of getting EV charging into apartment buildings never designed for it.
The affordability crisis is being approached from two distinct directions. Joseph Scuderi founded One Living as an institutionally backed developer-builder designed to scale residential delivery through technology and disciplined process, asking whether today's affordability pressures represent a generational opening for institutional capital. Michael Romano at Freecity is making the case for modular construction across a 6,000-home pipeline, arguing it can cut delivery time by 40 percent — a claim that, if proven at scale, could fundamentally alter residential economics.
The Gold Coast itself is part of the story. Luke Altshwager spent more than 30 years in professional golf before developing a masterplanned precinct integrating a surf lagoon, golf course, resort hotel, and retirement living, with the first phase opening in 2027. His presentation frames lifestyle infrastructure not as amenity but as development strategy — a repositioning of the Gold Coast from tourism afterthought to genuine destination.
What the assembled speakers share is a recognition that the linear model of land, capital, planning, and construction is no longer sufficient. The bets on the table at Urbanity-26 — institutional scale, modular speed, digital planning, human-centered design — represent an industry trying to write a new playbook before the old one fails completely.
Australia's real estate industry is gathering in July to reckon with a fundamental question: how do you build cities faster, smarter, and at scale when the old playbook no longer works? Urbanity-26, a three-day conference at The Star Gold Coast from July 22 to 24, has assembled a roster of developers, technologists, and financiers who are each trying to answer that question in their own corner of the market.
Rob Clarke, chief development officer at Gurner Group, brings the scale argument. His firm manages a $14.6 billion portfolio and a pipeline of more than 11,000 homes spread across five cities. Recent projects include the $2.75 billion Elysium Fields precinct at Docklands and an $800 million development at 189 Kent Street in Sydney. Clarke's panel will focus on navigating luxury development at the scale required to move the needle on housing supply—a problem that has become increasingly urgent as Australian cities have grown more expensive and less accessible.
The financing side of that equation is being reshaped by people like Cathy Houston, managing director of real estate credit at MA Financial. When Houston joined the firm in 2019, its real estate credit platform held $200 million. Today it manages $2.5 billion. Her career spans HSBC, RBS, NAB, and Bankers Trust, and she brings a perspective on where capital is actually flowing in a market buffeted by geopolitical risk, interest rate volatility, and shifting investor appetite. Her panel will explore how value is being found in what the conference calls the 'investi-verse'—a market that has become harder to read and navigate.
But capital and scale alone don't create places where people want to live. That's where figures like Glen Power and Jason Dunn come in. Power, a partner at Urbis and president of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects Queensland chapter, has spent more than 25 years designing parklands and public spaces across Queensland. He's become a leading voice for the Green Grid, the connected green space legacy that will outlast the Brisbane 2032 Olympics. Dunn left a career at Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, and Commonwealth Bank to return to Byron Bay, where his Jonson Lane development was named best boutique development in Australia. His current project, Secret Garden Residences, is under construction. Together, they'll discuss how human-centered design and public realm investment create places that actually retain people.
The conference is also grappling with the technological transformation reshaping how cities are planned and built. Michael Milford, director of QUT's Centre for Robotics, will deliver the opening keynote on how robots and autonomous agents will reshape cities. He's given more than 200 keynotes across 13 countries for Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Toyota, OpenAI, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Russell Vine, the lead innovation officer at Cross River Rail Delivery Authority, is already building that future. His team has created a real-time digital twin of Brisbane's CBD by integrating BIM, GIS, and gaming engine technology. What began as a construction tool is evolving into a long-term city-planning platform for the Queensland government—a glimpse of how cities might be designed and managed in the coming decade.
The infrastructure of daily life is also being reimagined. Luke Rust founded Ollo after identifying a gap in how Australian developments handle transport and sustainability. His company embeds shared EV fleets, charging infrastructure, and micromobility solutions directly into buildings as managed amenities. Nas Jafari, founder and managing director of Future Charging Solutions, has spent more than 15 years solving a more granular problem: getting EV charging into apartment buildings that were never designed for it. She won the 2025 Australian Small Business Champion Award and co-authored a book on apartment EV charging. Their panel will explore how cities are becoming platforms for data, digital infrastructure, and emerging technology.
The housing affordability crisis is being approached from multiple angles. Joseph Scuderi, founder and executive director of One Living, has delivered more than 4,000 homes and transacted more than $4 billion in real estate across his career at Mirvac and Landmark Group Australia. He founded One Living as an institutionally backed, fully integrated developer-builder designed to scale residential delivery through technology and disciplined process. His panel will ask whether the current affordability pressures have created a generational opportunity for institutional capital to reshape how housing gets built. Meanwhile, Michael Romano, executive director of development at Freecity, is making a case for modular construction. Freecity manages a $6 billion portfolio and a 6,000-home pipeline. Romano argues that modular construction can reduce delivery time by 40 percent—a claim that, if proven at scale, could fundamentally alter the economics of residential development.
The Gold Coast is being repositioned as a lifestyle destination rather than a tourism afterthought. Luke Altshwager, founder and managing director of Palm Valley Gold Coast, spent more than 30 years in professional golf before developing a fully approved masterplanned precinct that integrates a Mick Fanning-backed surf lagoon, golf course, beach club, resort hotel, retirement living, and more than 200 residences. The first $120 million phase opens in 2027. His presentation will explore how tourism infrastructure and lifestyle amenity are converging to reshape the Gold Coast's development identity.
The conference opens a window into an industry in transition. The speakers represent different bets on how Australian cities will be built, financed, and inhabited in the next decade. Some are betting on scale and institutional capital. Others are betting on technology, modular construction, and digital planning tools. Still others are betting on human-centered design and lifestyle integration. What they share is a recognition that the old model—land, capital, planning approval, construction—is no longer sufficient. The full program is available now, with tickets on sale at final release pricing.
Notable Quotes
Modular construction can reduce delivery time by 40 percent— Michael Romano, Freecity executive director of development
One Living was founded as an institutionally backed, fully integrated developer-builder designed to scale residential delivery through technology and disciplined process— Joseph Scuderi, One Living founder and executive director
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does a real estate conference matter right now? What's actually changing?
The fundamentals are breaking. You can't build enough homes at prices people can afford using the old methods. So everyone in this industry is experimenting simultaneously—with technology, with financing structures, with how buildings are designed and assembled. This conference is where those experiments collide.
Give me a concrete example.
Modular construction. If you can actually cut delivery time by 40 percent, that changes the entire financial model of a development. You're holding land and capital for less time. You can pass savings to buyers. But it only works if you do it at scale, with discipline. That's what Freecity is trying to prove.
And the digital twin—is that real or hype?
It's real. Brisbane's CBD now exists as a real-time digital model that planners can use to test infrastructure changes, traffic patterns, building placement. It started as a construction tool for Cross River Rail. Now it's becoming the planning platform for the whole city. That's not hype. That's the future of urban planning.
What about the affordability problem? Can any of this actually solve it?
Honestly, it's unclear. You can build faster and cheaper with modular construction. You can finance differently with institutional capital. But if land costs and interest rates don't move, you're rearranging deck chairs. The real question is whether technology and process can move the needle faster than prices rise. That's what Scuderi and others are betting on.
Why does the Gold Coast matter in this conversation?
Because it's a test case for what happens when you stop thinking of a place as just residential or just tourism. Palm Valley is integrating a surf lagoon, golf course, hotel, retirement living, and homes. It's asking: what if lifestyle amenity is the actual product, not the afterthought? If that works at scale, it changes how you think about development everywhere.
So what should someone actually watch for at this conference?
Whether these people can actually deliver at the scale they're claiming. Clarke has 11,000 homes in the pipeline. Freecity has 6,000. Scuderi is building an institutional machine for residential. If any of them crack the code on speed and cost, it matters. If they don't, it's just expensive experimentation.