Suburbs kind of makes sense
When people live in the suburbs, that makes them a little disconnected from the city. This would require a set of amenities for the families to sustain in the suburbs. If these were planned in walkable zones of the suburbs, that would positively impact the environment. Suburbs still require people to commute to offices on a daily basis. If we could provide a robust public transport system and connectivity options, people might move towards using public transport, which would again support the environment.
In the U.S, we could see that kind of connectivity in Newyork city, but still, citizens have the urge to use cars while commuting to suburbs around the city. Apart from this particular lens of LEED, suburbs are a great place to live. They provide affordable living and eventually a decent lifestyle to many.
New York, train subway lines
Post-Covid, 42% of American employees are working from home permanently. There are cases where employees visit offices weekly twice or even less and when they are required physically only. This is the achievement of the technology and affordability of fast internet services. I have seen families purchasing homes in suburbs as they wouldn't need to be present in the offices in the cities anymore. This not only boosted the housing real estate but also commercial real estate. This would probably become a trend and push the suburbs' quality because that's where the people are going to spend a lot of time now. This approach would spread suburbs further away from the cities and decrease the density, traffic, and pollution issues.
Only 26% of the employees had to run the country working physically present in the location. If it has even gone to 40% altogether, 40-60% of the employees and business can be done online. These calculations can draw a set of small circles around 40% of the main city circle.
On the other hand, this would increase the standard of living of suburbs compared to the cities and increase the cost of living. This now pushes the essential workers and low-income wage workers towards cities. The real estate in the cities goes down along with the standard of living.
What I have understood at last by this analysis is that it is a catch 22 situation to live in suburbs or cities.
I'm really interested in this question of what's going to happen to offices. It was a weird experience when interviewing with architecture firms and inquiring about remote positions- most of the time, it immediately deflated the conversation. I get that a lot of firms want to preserve the "studio culture", but at the same time it feels like architecture, for all our talk of thinking progressively, isn't working very differently. If we're going to beat the sustainability drum, does it really make sense to demand that all employees leave their homes every day and drive to an office where they're spend most of the time clicking through Revit until it's time to drive home again? Haven't we proven to ourselves that it's at least possible to work in a hybrid in-person/remote model? Imagine how much energy we can avoid wasting if we only went into work like 3 days a week? That's 40% less driving. 40% fewer days of fully climate controlling an office. What if everyone did that? it could make a really big difference.
ReplyDeleteI really agree to that Harisson, Hybrid model could be very effective. I know few IT professionals back at home who work from home mostly and go to offices when ever needed, like meeting clients or to attend high profile meeting. I have asked them what was their primary reason to do that. 4 out of 6 people said they hate traffic.
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