Professional Intensive: Innovation in the Built Environment
You were trained to shape cities, buildings, and thriving places. You went into this work because you wanted to make things better. Somewhere between school and practice, ambitions got narrower, the projects got more constrained, and the systems that you work within proved stiff.
Just about every other sector has experienced significant productivity growth, but the built environment fields lag behind. New entrants with business school backgrounds and venture capital are coming for parts of the value chain that architects, planners, and developers have always owned. Clients are asking for impacts that most firms have no framework to guarantee. Technology is accelerating in ways that will not wait for the profession to catch up.
If you’ve been sitting with a growing sense that something is fundamentally broken, you’re not wrong. And you’re not alone. This 6-week online course was built for practitioners who are done waiting for someone else to figure it out.
Registration: $1200
Enrollment is limited.
Need help making the case to your employer? Here’s a professional development request letter you can use.
If you are a firm leader and would like to send more than one participant, contact us for discount pricing at urbantechnology@umich.edu.
Continuing Education:
9.5 CM credits (AICP) or 4 LU (AIA)
The Context is Changing, Are You?
The built environment is one of the least digitized, least innovative sectors in the global economy. That’s not just a professional frustration, it’s a structural gap. Research suggests housing, for example, is roughly 10 times under-innovated relative to other high-capital industries when measured by startup activity per dollar of market size.
About 11,000 startups are currently working to reshape how buildings get designed, financed, built, and operated. New regulations are demanding performance on climate, health, and equity. Clients are beginning to ask questions that most firms aren’t equipped to answer. Professionals who understand both the domain of the built environment and the new business landscape are extraordinarily rare. We think there need to be more practitioners who confidently have a foot in both areas.
For Intrapreneurs & Entrepreneurs
This Professional Intensive is designed for mid-career professionals with ~3-5 years experience in architecture, real estate, construction management, urban planning, urban design, or landscape architecture. Perhaps you have accumulated real experience and real frustrations, or have a sense that there is a bigger conversation emerging.
Maybe you’ve watched startups enter your market and haven’t known how to evaluate whether they’re a genuine threat or just noise. Maybe you’ve had ideas about how your firm could work differently but lacked the vocabulary or framework to make the case. Maybe you read about urban technology and proptech and contech and feel like you’re supposed to understand what it means for your work, but no one has given you a map.
This course is for people who want to think bigger but don’t know where to start, what to read, who to follow, or how to separate signal from noise. You’ll leave with all of that, and with peers who are asking the same questions.
Whether you’re an intrapreneur trying to move innovation forward inside a firm, or an entrepreneur beginning to explore what lies beyond traditional built environment practice, this course was built with you in mind.
Takeaways
Most professional development gives you information. This course gives you something harder to find: a framework for operating differently.
Context. A clear-eyed view of the economic and technological forces reshaping architecture, construction, and real estate, and the habits and resources to keep up with them long after the course ends.
Capability. The ability to tell the difference between a good idea and a good business idea, and to communicate that distinction with confidence to colleagues, clients, and leadership.
Fluency. A working understanding of how value is created and captured across the built environment value chain, including where the money actually comes from, what unit economics mean in practice, and how to read the competitive landscape around you.
Credibility. The ability to make a convincing case for an innovation or new approach inside your firm or to an external partner, backed by real analysis rather than intuition alone.
Network. A cohort of practitioners across architecture, real estate, construction, and planning who share your sense of urgency and your belief that the status quo is not good enough.
Details
The course runs over six weeks, combining five online sessions with an optional two-day In-Person Intensive in Detroit, Michigan. Continuing Education credits available: 9.5 CM credits (AICP) or 4 LU (AIA)
Part I: Virtual Sessions — Every Wednesday from May 20 through June 17. Sessions are 7 to 8:30pm ET. covering the innovation landscape, industry value chains, incumbent models, and entrepreneurial approaches to the built environment.
- Session 1: Innovation and Entrepreneurial Landscape
- Session 2: Value Chains + Industry Structure
- Session 3: Incumbent Models
- Session 4: Entrepreneurial and Hybrid Innovation Models
- Session 5: Pitch Concepts
Part II: In-Person Session (Optional) — June 25 and 26, Detroit. Two days of deep work covering the forces shaping the future of AECO, team project development, faculty-led sessions, and final innovation pitches. Dinner and social evening included.
Presenters
Evelyn M. Lee, FAIA, NOMA, works in the intersection of architecture, technology, and business transformation. As 2025 President of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), she brings a national leadership perspective on the future of practice. Originally trained as an architect, Evelyn now works in the tech sector as an angel investor, startup advisor, and fractional COO to small and mid-sized firms. She understands both the operational realities of design practice and the innovation frameworks that drive scalable ventures. As founder of Practice of Architecture and host of Practice Disrupted, she actively explores alternative business models, emerging technologies, and entrepreneurial pathways. Her expertise equips practitioners to rethink traditional practice, leverage technology strategically, and build resilient, future-ready ventures within the built environment.
Larry Fabbroni, AIA works at the intersection of innovation and the built environment. He advises real estate developers and organizations on strategy and development ventures. Larry previously led major master planning and mixed-use development projects at Strada Architecture and EE&K Architects. He recently founded the Housing Innovation + Futures Initiative (HI+FI), which explores how coordinated innovation across technology, capital, policy, and systems can expand housing production and transform the industry.
Larry holds a Bachelor of Architecture and Master of Public Policy and Management from Carnegie Mellon University and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. At Booth he assisted in teaching courses on innovation commercialization and entrepreneurial finance. He is a recipient of the AIA Young Architect Award and AIA Pennsylvania’s Emerging Professional of the Year, and former national president of the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS). He brings visionary leadership and practical expertise to advancing innovation in practice.
This course is developed in collaboration with Bryan Boyer, Associate Professor of Practice and Faculty Director of the Master of Urban Technology degree (launching in 2027), which this Professional Intensive is designed to prototype. His research, From Inertia to Impact, forms the intellectual backbone of the curriculum and examines why innovation in the built environment is so difficult and what it will take to change that.
Continuing Education:
9.5 CM credits (AICP) or 4 LU (AIA)
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