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I was lunching just a couple days ago to the Crown Estate's, that's the
the body which cares for all the property portfolio of the Royal Family in the UK.
And that can range from properties like
Regent Street or Regent's Park or, it can range
from royal palaces or shopping miles or
entire villages, that have been built or owned or planned
as part of the commitment of the Crown Estate to
preserve a property portfolio for future generations.
And one of the really interesting questions is this: What is the future
of cities?
Why do people like cities? You see, there are many futurists in the world but not
me,
who predicted for years, the decline of cities. They said that people hate cities,
they're busy, noisy, polluting, people want to move out of cities.
They predicted the growth of suburbia, the growth of teleworking
and how everyone will want to live in the countryside or by the sea.
Well, that turned out not to be true.
Exactly as I predicted, it would turn out not to be true. And why is that?
But tell you why: Well teleworking may be very popular but
the fact is that people also like to be together. They like to breathe the same
air, to live in community, to know who they're working with.
And that is why cities have been popular. Cities are popular because they're
magnets for talent.
They're magnets for specialist interests, for
niche shops, for extraordinary choice,
for entertainment, for the best restaurants in the country.
Cities are places where you get often better infrastructure in terms of
transport.
Often there is more wealth, there's better schools,
better universities, more opportunities for people to
entrepreneur new businesses. Cities are often
at places where migrants will arrive for the first time because they'll find
pockets of people
who speak the same language, same cultures, same shops, same businesses that
they recognise
from their own home. So cities are a great cultural melting pot.
They are the places where innovation is often developed.
Where ideas merge and fuse. There's a buzz and a pace about city life.
So what happened to the prediction? Ha. Cities around the world are growing.
Over the next decade
you can expect to see at least 200 million people to move toward cities
in China
alone. You'll see probably another £375 million
move toward cities in Africa. I was seeing people
move to what cities in the UK. London's population is growing for
example.
Will grow by 1-2 million over the next decade or so.
You've seen population density increase
high-rise blocks, we're seeing an extra premium on
development land. It's not, in the case of London, that
the, the outer edge of the city is being massively expanded. It's that the
concentration people inside the city
is continuing to grow. And at the same time, we're seeing
yes, of course, a number people tell you working has increased. In fact,
we all 'telework' these days because of course, we all work virtually.
We work on cars, on trains, we work at home,
we work on the beach. Home is work;
work is home and all the rest of it. Yes. And, officially people maybe teleworking so
they're,
to the point where they don't actually have to physically commute one
day a week or two days a week.
But most people are still working in offices.
You've got high technology companies like Yahoo, who have banned people
working at home during normal office hours, because they want people to
breathe the same air, they want the buzz of the city
in the buzz of the office, in the buzz of your Innovation Team,
they want all of these things going on. And you say,
'Yeah, but what about globalisation?' Yes, it's true, that for globalised companies
they may find, that most of their most important
working relationships are outside their physical office. So you might say, 'Well, they
might as well be at home then and just do video calls.'
But, the fact is, that there is still an advantage we find in people meeting
physically together.
And that's why conferencing is so popular, why corporate events continue to
be a boom time industry.
People gathering, different forums, seminars,
meetings, workshops, communities, ideas,
think tanks, whatever it is. It's the blend
of people, experiencing the same moment,
of revelation together. An idea being formed.
A team beginning to find its way forward.
A new initiative being processed.
Problems being dealt with. New consumer insights,
being shared. Whatever it is. City,
community, team belong in gatherings and are an absolutely vital part
on our future. And that means the planners
are going to need to pay ever closer attention to
denser infrastructure, faster trains
longer trains, better buses, more synchronised signaling,
more dynamic, and
flexible meeting environments, so that
people can continue to commute, to be densely packed together,
in small spaces, where they can do what they need to do, have fun
and then, yes okay, they'll move out to the outer parts of the city but
most of them will not commute very far, they will..
up to 45 minutes maybe at the most. Will still be the time
that most people will be willing to commute to their place of work.
And yes, there will be telework for some of that time as well.