Change of space

Today, I wanted to share something that’s been in the works for a while – the results of the Giant COVID Survey, which many of you were kind enough to participate in a couple of months ago. I collaborated on this project with Packy McCormick and Kristen Fulmer. 

Thanks to your help, we collected a LOT of wide-ranging data. We split up the findings into different themes and yesterday released the first batch of findings on a theme that at least one person here finds super interesting—the built environment.

It’s a topic that many have been thinking, writing, and opining about:

How will COVID shape our physical world? What aspects of our homes, workspaces, public spaces, and cities will change for now, and for good? 

I wanted to share some personal highlights from the findings and throw my hat into the predictions-for-the-future-of-spaces ring.

Office space

There’s been a lot of agonizing about a possible return to the office (or not). Will office workers return to their permanent domains? Stay working from home forever? Well, how about, begin a whole new way of working?

Most of our survey respondents (who, disclaimer, were mostly U.S. based, mostly younger, mostly well-educated, and mostly well-off) think that the days of working in a single office are over. 

We asked them where they thought workers with similar jobs as pre-COVID office workers would work after COVID. Less than a fifth (19%) believed that place would be the office. Instead, most believed that these workers would work at more than one location, either primarily based at home or at the office. 

As we’ve talked about in an earlier post, working from home some of the time (perhaps up to around two days a week) can be great for productivity, work satisfaction, stress, and meeting personal life needs. But too much working from home’s not great—the benefits plateau and loneliness and difficulties maintaining relationships with coworkers set in. 

After the current large-scale demonstration that most people can work from home when dire events cause them to, even in the most dinosaurish of industries and companies, I believe that after COVID, workers will expect some flexibility in choosing where to do their work. If banks, insurance companies, and food giants are reconsidering whether they need every tush in an office cush, then I think the new standards for flexible work are set.

At the same time, I don’t think people will choose to work from home every day, for the reasons mentioned above. If you have a choice of where to work, that might mean working from home, in a coffeeshop, in a specialized workspace rented for a particular task, or in a local workspace closer to home depending on what you’re doing that day. Meanwhile, having an office or collaborative workspace will still be valuable to meet with colleagues, to brainstorm, and to solve hard problems together, which is hard to do remotely. 

Anecdotally, this month I was able to come back to my normal workspace – a small coworking space a few blocks from my house, and demand (and use) is through the roof. People want to get out of the house to work, but they don’t necessarily want to go to a large office downtown. Fingers crossed for more walking-distance workspaces. More on that below. 

Chasing space

When you spend months on end in a small city apartment, a larger home and sprawling lawn start to have more appeal. We asked survey respondents whether they planned on moving in the next year, and if so, why. While most people (62%) were not planning on moving, the main reasons to move were to get a larger home (25% of those planning to move) or to have a backyard or other outdoor space (19% of those planning to move).

I feel this, especially as the parent of a young child. While I have no plans to move out of the city, spending time in rented country houses that had a deck, a garden, and a waterfront made a huge difference. The difference between a trail of destruction in literally every room of the apartment vs. a kid happily watering asparagus with a garden hose for 30 minutes. 

Perhaps thinking along similar lines, some survey respondents have already moved out of the city, at least for now. We asked respondents about where they lived in 2019—city, suburbs, or country—and where they spent the most time living since the start of COVID. We observed a noticeable migration out of the city. A fifth of former city dwellers have spent most of their time since the start of COVID either in the suburbs (15% of former city dwellers) or the country (5%). But time will tell whether these moves were temporary, as many moves since the start of COVID have been, or whether people decide to make them permanent.

Given this summer’s increased apartment vacancy rates in cities like New York, and increased interest in the surrounding suburban areas, these respondents are not alone in seeking out the ‘burbs.

Many respondents expect that a migration out of the city will continue: 45% predicted a noticeable migration out of cities in the next five years.

Are cities… over? Well I think this depends on what happens over the next year or two. Speaking as an American, if we (Americans) don’t get our act together and somehow schools and city amenities remain closed on-and-off until a return to normalcy in 2022 (h/t Carolina Campanella for sharing this prediction), then who in their right mind would remain in a tiny city apartment overrun by homeschooled kids for the next two years? And once you move to a home with more space and a yard, whether that’s further from the city center, in a suburb, or straight up in the country, habits will shift and it’ll become less and less likely that you’ll want to uproot yourself again to move back to a city just coming back to life.

Alternatively, as Dror Poleg proposed, cities could step their games up to keep valuable workers from leaving for the long-term. Features like increased walkability and bikeability, allowing space to be used more flexibly (see e.g., above re: the desire for nice walking-distance workspaces in residential areas), and expand the amenities that are available to most people.  

I hope that the mid 2020s bring us better cities rather than bigger suburbs.

Changing space

Even if we don’t plan to move to a new home, spending a lot of time in our existing homes made many of us re-evaluate what the space is like and decide to improve it. We asked respondents whether they plan on making changes to their homes as a result of their experience during COVID, and 43% are on it. Most frequently, people want to create or improve their home workspaces. This is another piece of evidence suggesting that working from home is not going to go away. After people have optimized their home workspaces and settled into positive work-from-home habits, asking them to return to the office full, full-time is probably going to be a hard “no”. 

Speaking of home workspace improvements, what changes in the home environment would make it easier to work from home? The top eight improvements respondents would like are ergonomic furniture, electronic upgrades, a closed home office, and better ambient conditions (daylight and view outside). I was happy to see that people are aware that ambient environmental conditions like access to daylight and view can impact their ability to work, as this is something we’ve shown before can improve people’s cognitive function, comfort, and reduce eyestrain while at work.

Apart from improving home workspaces, other home improvements that respondents plan on making ranged widely, from improving filtration and ventilation, upgrading kitchen appliances, rigging up a home gym, installing solar panels, to adding BBQs, plants, and hottubs to outdoor spaces. One respondent even mentioned wanting to buy a gun, something I wouldn’t quite qualify as a “home improvement” but that fits larger patterns of surging gun sales in the U.S. and Canada. 

Since more people are unemployed or underemployed than before COVID, I anticipate that a lot of these upgrades will be DIY vs. done by a paid professional. In addition to improving the quality of the space and its Instagrammability, DIY projects can give people a sense of competence (as we’ve talked about earlier), so I wonder if we’re in the early days of a 2020s Fixing Fixation spurred on by a combination of underemployment, feelings of helplessness in the face of giant societal problems, and the golden age of informative home-improvement Youtube videos. Are fancy-looking DIY home improvements to this recession what nail art was post-2008?

Public space

When this is all “over”, what public spaces do we look forward to visiting most? Restaurants, beaches, and bars topped the list for our respondents. These spaces have been reopened and reclosed in many parts of the U.S., so we’re probably a far way off from this reality.

Even when reopened, public spaces might return as ghosts of their former selves. Is a bar where everyone stands 6ft apart even a bar? 

We asked respondents to predict what kind of public space will change the most in its character as a result of COVID. It was interesting to see that restaurants and gyms are both spaces we look forward to visiting while anticipating large changes in their character. These predictions mapped on well to the kind of “high risk” spaces where people are indoors and in close proximity.

By far, people thought sports venues are the public spaces that would change the most in their character after COVID, while not predicting large changes to some other high-risk spaces, like barbershops or bars. Perhaps it’s because there’s no way to make these kind of spaces safe unless we start hiring hair cutting robots à la suck cut or create hologram bars.

Image source. Risk in indoor spaces, as measured by perceived level of contact and whether activity occurs indoors or outdoors.

I think we risk a large loss to people’s, especially city dwellers’, sense of community if businesses that serve as local public spaces shut down long-term and outlined further predictions for the possible effects of COVID here.

Space to grow

Despite the difficulty of making changes, I’m hopeful that this crisis can serve as a valuable chance to re-evaluate habits and customs. How can we make our homes more comfortable and healthier? Do we need to come into an office every day? Doesn’t it feel better to be outside and near nature, and how can we provide this opportunity to more people living in the city? 

As we realize what we need to do to improve our spaces, I also hope we can get our act together and do it.