From AI to Housing: How A Regional Planning Conference Envisions Highline Area

[Notes compiled and published by permission David Gould, a Burien Resident who attended the Cascadia Innovation Corridor Conference on October 28-29, 2025, in the Sheraton Grand Seattle Hotel, Seattle.]

[Editor's Note: The 2025/2026 Cascadia Innovation Conference is a regional, cross-border conference series focused on innovation, workforce development, housing, infrastructure, and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence across the Cascadia region from Vancouver, BC to Seattle and Portland.  The  goal is strengthening long-term economic competitiveness and informing local and regional planning.]

The following are Highlights from the 2025 Cascadia Innovation Conference Reports with potential applications to the Highline Region.

Cascadia Innovation Corridor Overview

The Cascadia Innovation Corridor is the geographic area from Vancouver, BC., south to Seattle and Portland. Economically, this corridor is about the same size as the Netherlands or Saudi Arabia. It is about the 18th largest economy in the world, and home to about 9 million people. Cascadia is one of several innovation corridors or districts that focus on cooperation to build regional technology hubs for business and commerce. The 10-year-old Cascadia Innovation Corridor is chaired by Chris Gregoire, our former Washington State Governor.

Housing

Cascadia’s population is expected to increase between 3–4 million people over the next 25 years (about a 30% increase over today), with a requirement of about 3 million new housing units. Yet, this number is expected to be about one million housing units short, given the various difficulties in building them, such as time, availability of land, construction costs, availability of labor, and such.

Burien has been allocated between 7,000 to 10,000 housing units over the same 25 years, and this presents an opportunity for Burien to develop more housing, including affordable housing, than ever before. This potential opportunity requires more people educated and trained in the trade school skills needed for construction.

Education

The focus of the 2025 Conference was on AI, with the aspiration of creating a global AI hub in Cascadia.

From a Google search, Highline School District ranks as the #11 most diverse district in Washington out of 233 districts, according to Niche. However, its overall academic performance is mixed; it has a 79% average graduation rate and an average SAT score of 1140. On the other hand, the district has lower-than-average proficiency rates, with 37% in reading and 24% in math.

Given this data, education seems both a weakness and an opportunity for the Highline Region. While not all kids are going to become AI or robotics professionals, it seems the school district could do better in providing additional STEM classes, improving financial literacy, and offering some classes on starting /running a small business. Trade school education and training would be another opportunity for our local area, given the demand for housing, and all that goes into it, such as interior designing, carpeting, and so on.

Misinformation / Disinformation

The World Economic Forum lists misinformation/disinformation at the top of their Global Risks Report for 2025. A UW researcher specifically addressed this issue, among a few others, that we didn’t need AI for most things that we do. Instead, he strongly recommended that we learn to think and act critically, because as bad as misinformation /disinformation is today, AI will likely make it much more difficult to see, understand, and cope with. Cybertheft, scams, and so on are good examples of that today.

This topic is both a threat and an opportunity for the Highline area. We can choose to ignore it and watch some to many of our residents lose money, jobs, and time to misinformation/disinformation or begin to include critical thinking into school curriculums and elsewhere to teach them how to protect themselves from criminals and other predators and importantly to listen, read, and watch and find what is true and factual or just fantasy, propaganda, or nonsense.

Highspeed Rail

High-speed rail linking Vancouver to Seattle to Portland is a couple of decades away, but it would become the backbone of Cascadia, linking the cities together within commuting time.

A long-term opportunity for Highline might be to enhance the Puget Sound Skills Center.  But building high-speed rail or extending our light rail and all that goes within it or spins off, requires people with a variety of skill sets: plumbing, carpentry, painting, design, electrical work, construction, and many others.

Energy

The world-wide demand for energy continues to increase, with much of the demand going to data centers. Yet, the electric vehicle market, along with solar, wind, and batteries, will continue to increase regardless of the party in office due to the lower cost and faster scale of renewables, and to help mitigate/ adapt to climate change.

Potential opportunities over time for Highline may exist in roof-top solar, balcony solar, EV charger installations, planting tree cover, creating cooling and warming shelters, among others.

Economic Development

While not a specific topic on the Conference agenda, economic development clearly was on attendee’s minds as we begin to seriously determine how to monetize the coming AI gold rush. As one attendee put it, many of us will be designing and building the AI tools other companies will deploy at scale. Given this approach to thinking, there will be many second-order effects of the AI gold rush, along with the additional 3–4 million people and housing needs, such as the need for more small businesses.

Burien, with an influx of an additional 7,000 to 10,000 housing units, or about 12,000 to 15,000 more people (about a population increase of 30%), would present an opportunity for more bakeries, cafés, brewpubs, attorneys, health clinics, and so forth. Again, an opportunity for entrepreneurs, professionals, and trades people.

While the focus of the conference was on AI, the 30% or so projected increase in population over the next generation (20–25 years), along with an aging population in our region, means hundreds to thousands of new jobs in this time frame. Many will be in technology, but most jobs will require additional and ongoing education than are required today and they will be found in Burien, nearby, and elsewhere.

The Highline area will see a significant increase in population over the next couple of decades with new economic opportunities and driving new requirements for housing, energy, transportation, services, and so on. Burien has developed a good comprehensive plan, and now other local cities must do likewise. The challenge is to implement it along with any necessary modifications as our environment changes.