This archive report was first published on 14 May 2020.
As I reflect on the changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, I am reminded of a story about a friend who built a beautiful home in a leafy neighborhood. He was proud of his garden, which was designed to be a peaceful oasis. However, he rarely had time to enjoy it, always being busy and on the move.
This story resonates with many of us who have built our own homes, only to find that our dreams and aspirations often go unrealized. The pandemic has changed all that, forcing us to reevaluate our priorities and adapt to a new reality.
Working from home, once considered a luxury, has become a necessity. And while some may find it challenging to separate work and personal life, others have discovered the benefits of this new reality. With the rise of remote work, our homes are no longer just a place to rest and relax, but also a workspace.
As an architect pointed out, the only thing we achieve by going to work is changing our location and breathing germs into each other's faces. With the advancement of technology, we can now hold meetings, work, and consult with our teams without leaving our homes.
This shift has significant implications for the way we design our homes and cities. Offices will no longer be just dens and man caves, but functional spaces equipped with good screens for Zoom, stable Wi-Fi, and comfortable chairs. They will be capable of receiving and hosting visitors and will not be in intimate parts of the house.
As we adapt to this new reality, we will also need to learn how to ignore urgent business and ration our energy appropriately. Workers will become more autonomous, capable of taking care of their own small IT issues, doing their own photocopying or printing, and making their own tea.
With the cost of doing work expected to go down, we can expect a dramatic change in the economy and sociology of our cities. Traffic will decline, and we will need to take many services now concentrated in the city center to the estates. This will have an effect on the way we design and lay out cities, with fewer commuters meaning less pollution, less fuel burnt in traffic jams, and less time wasted in torturous commutes.
Working from home also means that more people will spend time with their families and actually raise their children, rather than leaving it to TV, the internet, and the grooming perverts who lurk in there. Couples will spend more time together, living and working together rather than meeting occasionally around the house.
However, this new reality also brings its challenges. Some couples, after spending a lot of time together, may act out their aggression, sometimes leading to violence. But I doubt that these are in the majority.
Finally, people, and especially the middle classes, fear the idea, rather than the reality, of being broke. Those who suffered income loss are perhaps starting to realize that having less money is a good trade-off for all the hustle they have to endure in order to make more money, that there is a lot of pleasure to be had from having more free time and less stress even if it means less money.
As we navigate this new reality, let us not forget the silver lining of this calamity. Imagine all those people who would finally be able to sit in their disused gardens and read their forgotten books.
