Random thoughtsa on housing, construction, transport, employment, etc..

On construction goals, logistics transport and office commuting.

Rather than critique the fumbling of politicians, I venture to suggest that answers to all these lie in much deeper forward planning.

One thing that may emerge from the mess we are currently in is the realisation of several strategic shifts that I (among others) have been advocating for decades (shouting into the hollows of my mind of course because not one listens, everyone speaks).

I suggest, forget adding one’s voice to the professed moral indignation of the virtuous and turn instead to trying to visualise what might be done in the much longer term than the crisis of confidence that has erupted with COVID-19, which, in strategic terms, through its sudden disruptive power, may be the stimulus that changes the mindset.

In random order: - 
The devolution of work (that proportion of the economy that is information based) from city hubs to local micro-hubs (or home based work).
The replacement of many tasks (and occupations) by AI.

Think Apple. This is an analogous tale,
In the early days business IT philosophy was based upon central processing (big computer in the control of IT experts) and dumb terminals (Atex for instance) to keep workers ‘in-house’ where their performance and behaviour could be most easily monitored. Apple computers are ‘intelligent’ thus able to function irrespective of the core IT setup being viable.
At the Telegraph I demanded that my graphics unit was Mac based (IT tried to argue but failed). When the central system broke down as it frequently did, we were the only section able to continue working.
The ‘federal’ system of business (Apple) had no need of centralisation because each terminal (worker) works independently and communicates with fellows and central systems when the need arises (this is becoming increasingly a norm for publishing where the content providers work remotely and only production workers (editors etc work in-house). It is a hybrid of old and new.

Communication has long ago reached the point when those latter are not needed to work in-house most of the time if at all. In-house workers waste massive amounts of time in meetings, formal and informal But bosses are happy because they can see them.
They also waste massive amounts of time ‘commuting’ to their hives.

It is this perceived need for oversight that drives the whole city centre tower block worker ant syndrome.
Bosses cannot get their heads around the concept that people cannot be persuaded to work unless they are physically under the thumb of their overseers. 

The ‘shared office’ concept, now increasing for freelance workers is one that every information based company could tie into. 
Workers (those who cannot work from home due to space / interference) commute only locally to their shared micro hubs (with secure links to head office  and parallel micro hubs.

City centre commuting - end of.
Long car journeys and traffic jams - vast reduction in.
Vehicle pollution - smashed.
Train journeys - minimised.
No need for better faster trains. ie. HS2 - end of.
STOP THE NEED FOR PHYSICAL TRAVEL.
Time wasted in both - end of.

City centre tower blocks - end of (many will have their footing underwater anyway soon if sea levels rise as predicted. Meanwhile award winning architects keep building ever more elaborate and fantastical edifices without a thought of how they will be serviced when the land upon which they sit is inundated.

Instead all that cash can be injected into local infrastructure enabling a cross section of companies to work in micro-hubs securely and for workers to be enabled to work from home (through secure personal hubs with audio visual communication with their colleagues and bosses - hi-tech garden sheds for instance.
All paid for by the companies out of the savings they make from NOT having to rent or buy office blocks in city centres or subsidising their workers commuting costs through grants loans or higher wages.

The Northern Powerhouse concept to be spuriously enabled by fast train links so that bosses can whizz back to London will instead come about naturally (as will the Welsh Powerhouse, the Cornish Powerhouse, the Everywhere Else Powerhouse) by virtue of installing the most advanced internet technology (paid for by the savings on HS2).

Pollution levels will plummet as ‘essential travel’ becomes mental (ultimately by augmented reality communications).
Cars will become ‘unessential’ - and electrified - before being replaced by technologies that are just now in their infancy.
Necessary long distance journeys will be essentially the transportation of goods by electrified lorry, an enhanced railways goods network, vacuum tube pods linking distribution hubs (not necessarily in cities).
The now mainly redundant city business centres can be re-peopled as living zones of a much higher quality (because created for the more wealthy middle classes) accommodation. This assuming that all the measures above have not slowed the advent of sea-level rise inundation of the world’s major metropolises (some large percentage of which lie in flood prone plains).

Revolutionary housing construction methods will have taken into consideration the changing needs of society and be constructed in such a fashion as to NOT ‘despoil the soil’ upon which they sit. They will be as easily removed as constructed - ‘by design’ by unskilled workers or their own future inhabitants - with no concrete foundations, elevated to remove flood vulnerability while ate same time allowing that area of land that would have been removed from the water-absorption equation by concretisation to perform its natural function.

Building regulations that are frozen in concept the methods not much improved since Roman times, will have to be overturned to accommodate such methods.

It may well be that the Tarmac-ing of Britain may have become to some extent unnecessary by this time as transport modes evolve beyond the rubber -tyre phase (and rubber is under threat worldwide from disease just as bananas are - Continental are exploring ways to commercial produce rubber from the only other source - Dandelion sap!