Focusing on place and what makes us human will be crucial in the emergent era of AI, the development sector has been warned.

At The Urban Developer’s flagship Urbanity-26 conference on the Gold Coast, Cadre Australia director Chris Tyas said true place-making started with listening to the land—sitting in silence, observing the sun and natural and prevailing rhythms before designing.

“I think at the dawn of a new industrial revolution, being AI, we don’t know what’s real and what’s fake,” he told at a panel session on human-led precincts.