As wildfire rebuilding, affordability pressures, and labor constraints converge, off-site construction is moving from niche solution to market necessity. In this interview, Founder and CEO of Plant Prefab, Steve Glenn, reflects on two decades in industrialized housing, tracing how prefab has evolved from design experimentation to a delivery-driven business shaped by automation, permitting frameworks, and capital discipline.

In his State of the City address, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie described the city as a “city on the rise” while outlining an agenda focused on making recent progress durable and broadly shared. Highlighting declines in crime, a strengthened police pipeline, expanded treatment capacity, and a coordinated recovery-first approach to fentanyl and homelessness, Lurie tied improved street conditions to signs of economic resurgence downtown, increased tourism and conference activity, and major global events ahead.

A personal mentor, Bob Foster, across two decades of meetings and interviews with our newsletters, is remembered less as a politician reacting to events than as an authentic, one-of-a-kind, systems thinker insisting on preparedness, institutional clarity, and physical reality. Whether speaking as President of Southern California Edison, Chair of the California ISO, or Mayor of Long Beach, Foster returned to the same uncomfortable truth: modern society depends on infrastructure that must be planned years in advance, paid for honestly, and governed without illusion.

FPH2’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jason Caudle explains how California’s hydrogen market is shifting from policy anticipation to market execution. As cities, transit agencies, and suppliers align around offtake, Caudle outlines how FPH2 is aggregating demand, supporting bankable supply, and keeping momentum in the hydrogen market moving forward.

In this conversation, Cole argues that 2026 will be a decisive year for Pasadena and Los Angeles alike, contending that the cities’ futures are deeply intertwined—and that the moment demands systemic reform rather than incremental fixes.

When TPR, introduced by then LA County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, spoke with Frank Gehry in Bilbao, Spain (1998), the Guggenheim had been open less than a year—yet it had already reshaped a city and reframed the role of architecture in public life. Gehry spoke not of icons or legacy, but of movement, emotion, and discipline. Remembering Gehry’s legacy is to remember the disciplined design process he championed, one that restores belief. His work mattered not for its spectacle, but for its fundamental respect for art, for makers, and for the cities it inhabits.

In conversation, Erin Rank, President & CEO of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles, reflects on her 25+ years of leadership transforming Habitat LA from an all-volunteer, one-home-at-a-time nonprofit into one of the region’s most significant builders of affordable homeownership.