Ushering in the 21st century through Corona

by Sieger Dijkstra, May 11, 2020

edited by Evert Akkerman

How we can apply lessons learned from the Corona crisis and tackle other issues, such as lack of affordable housing, gridlock, environmental challenges and education.

It used to be hard enough to anticipate what would happen in a few weeks or months, let alone years, so we tended to be focused on the short term. COVID-19 made us realize that looking ahead, even a few days, is a challenge.

What a tough time. For the sick, for the elderly, for healthcare workers, for bereaved families. And there’s uncertainty for many as-yet healthy people about their own well-being, about their families, about their jobs and about their business. And life in general.

No wonder we're focused on dealing with the urgencies of the day, instead of asking how we are going to implement six feet of personal space at work or how our companies will survive.

But let's try and look ahead, as this may prompt us to make better choices today. Right now, we have the momentum to take a different path. We know that we can, as what we’ve seen in the past several weeks is adaptability, innovation and entrepreneurship!

Going forward, how are we going to deal with working from home, mobility, housing, offices, space, education and production? How can we leverage lessons learned from the Corona crisis and tackle other pressing issues, such as lack of affordable housing, gridlock, environmental challenges and the future of education?

Do we stick with inefficient office designs or do we continue working from home?

Many of us have had a wake-up call: bricks are not your business or your identity: it’s the people, and what you and your team stand for. We've learned that working from home can actually work very well. ’WFH’ allows for a much more flexible layout of company offices: you can go to the ‘official’ office for consultation and personal contact, and you can focus on getting the work done in your home office. As a result, company offices will soon seem far from home and far too big.

Housing shortage or lack of professional workspace?

All this office space that we no longer need can be converted into residential space, and this is how we can address the affordable housing shortage. The choice is simple: will we create inefficient office space to allow for a 6-foot distance between employees everywhere, or do we take the plunge and opt for nicer, larger homes with an office area and improved, inspiring, spacious workplaces at HQ?

More or less traffic?

We also have an opportunity to improve mobility. If we do nothing, people will avoid public transit and take the car en masse, resulting in traffic jams of nightmare proportions. But if many of us continue working from home, there’s less need for travel. By reducing our number of commutes and the number of people commuting, spreading school hours, staggering work hours and having meetings online, we free up valuable time that we can spend on work as well as family. Less traffic means reduced emissions. Now is the time to take a good look at mobility: 60 people on a bus or thousands on a train or subway? People simply won’t do it anymore. Today's public transit is outdated: instead, let’s think about alternatives such as bicycles, part-time cars, ridesharing, ride-hailing and self-driving pods.

Reducing your footprint? No, no, no.

Small is beautiful? This may be a thing of the past. If you work from home, you’ll want space. No longer shoehorned into crowded cities, but beautiful spacious houses with a comfortable home office and a yard and parks and trails nearby. North America and rural Europe offer this in spades. It’s available. Right here. We can unlock these areas with smart mobility and bullet trains. Are we going to live even closer together in urban areas and risk infecting each other, or are we going to look for space? The choice is ours.

Modernizing education

Online learning offers opportunities we had not utilized as much before COVID-19. For people who decide to expand their knowledge or switch careers, courses will be available when it suits them. This will be much more convenient than learning in a classroom environment with fixed hours. During Corona, millions of children took online classes and it worked quite well.

Traditionally, many teachers have disseminated the same knowledge for hours each day to relatively small groups, year after year. We now know that this knowledge can be presented online to many thousands at a time by enthusiastic educators. The hours that our teachers save this way can be redirected towards 1-on-1 guidance for children with special needs. This would also go a long way in addressing teacher shortages.

Dependence on production elsewhere, or robotization

Open economies can yield great benefits, but also make us vulnerable. If one country goes into lockdown, another country’s essential services, raw materials and production may be affected. This is why we need to bring production back, and it can be achieved through robotization. While robots take work out of human hands, they can create efficiencies as well as jobs.

Being a tourist in your own country

This is the year when most of us will be spending vacation time at home, in our own country. It’s an opportunity for various regions to promote themselves as a great place to live, work and play. There are forests, lakes and clean air. Will we let this opportunity pass, or are we going to seize it?

Creating the future

While Corona caused a lot of grief and wreaked economic havoc across the globe, it also provided opportunities and triggered new insights. We’re living in the 21st century, and here’s a chance to shake off the shackles of the 20th.

If we look beyond the weeks and months ahead, we can change our lives forever – if we have the courage to try. How exactly, no one knows. However, the best way to predict the future is to create it yourself! So, let’s get to work.

Stay healthy.