Cultures, Communities and Design

Abstract

This presentation examines the post-COVID-19 impacts on the workspace and what this could mean for central business districts [CBD’s] and the potential growth of neighborhood centers and the pre-existing towns around which many suburbs grew. Can urbanism exist outside of CBD’s in revitalized neighborhoods or suburban centers? Has this the potential to change suburbia from a dormitory to a holistic 24/7 culture? Surveys are indicating that at least 25-30%, of the office workforce will continue to work from home in a post-COVID world. With such a high percentage of the workforce continuing some sort of remote working what will this mean for traditional urban cores? And if up to 30% of the workforce are no longer working every weekday in CBD’s, where will they be working from? Is it realistic to expect that all of this population will be working from spare bedrooms or off dining room tables? Is there an opportunity here for remote or satellite neighborhood workplaces to develop? Could this be a workplace interpretation of Edward Soja’s “Third Space” , a [sub]urban hybrid distributed presence between home and the office which builds organically out of the necessity to address the provision of a safe and resilient workplace? The last critical design interventions into suburbia were realized by Arts & Architecture magazine’s Case Study House program in California during the 1950’s and 1960’s. With the increasing diversity and population growth of suburban centers, can we make the transition to densify their cores, thus going some way towards fulfilling Louis Wirth’s three characteristics of cities and urbanism – large population size, social heterogeneity and population density? Has the time arrived for the design community to re-engage with suburbia?