In a recent episode of The Building Texas Show, strategist Michael Shear proposed replacing a single 60-floor downtown tower with ten six-floor office buildings in suburbs and exurbs like Cedar Park and Luling. The concept, called Project ION, aims to address Austin's commute crisis by creating distributed office networks linked by a dedicated regional fiber backbone and edge computing infrastructure.
Shear, leader of Strategic Office Networks, argued that the infrastructure decisions made in the next 12 to 24 months will define commuting, housing, and resilience for the next century. He described the current model as a 20th-century structure that has 'entombed' regions in congestion. Citing the 2026 book 'Overbuilt: The High Cost and Low Rewards of US Highways,' he noted that 22% of land in 316 U.S. metro areas is paved, echoing the Texas Transportation Institute's warning that regions cannot build their way out of growth.
The conversation extended beyond remote work to public safety and economic resilience. Shear described meetings with fire and police chiefs about deployment readiness during evacuations and referenced Nobel-recognized research by Joel Mokyr on how hardened institutions stall innovation. He pointed to Central Texas assets—including state government, R&D universities, military complexes, and semiconductor fabs—as both competitive advantages and high-value targets.
Shear also highlighted generational economics: where a 30-year career once matched a 30-year mortgage, today's three-to-five-year job tenures put homebuying at risk. Networked hubs could allow workers to change employers without changing communities. He noted a recent Christmas-parade live portal linking a Texas town to Ireland as a preview of XR, spatial acoustics, and haptic tools becoming mainstream within three to five years.
The episode, hosted by Justin McKenzie, is available on YouTube and wherever podcasts are heard. Shear confirmed that Google Fiber crews were laying new lines outside his home during the week of taping, underscoring the tangible steps toward a distributed network future.
