Five years post-COVID lockdown, significant changes in work and commerce remain permanent. Remote work is now commonplace, with one-third of employees working from home. E-commerce has surged, especially in sectors like beauty, reshaping retail. As commercial spaces empty, experts like Sara Jensen Carr suggest they could be converted to housing, allowing city planners to revitalize communities. However, investment in social spaces, or 'third places,' is lacking, despite initial enthusiasm during the pandemic for enhancing social interactions in public spaces. Planners and residents must reconsider urban design in this context.
Remote work is probably the biggest, more permanent shift that we've seen from the pandemic. Folks thought maybe this would be a more temporary shift. But even the most recent work-from-home data suggest that more than a third of employed folks are working from home.
E-commerce, in general, has completely blown up and has been really resilient across retail lanes, with a huge rise in self-care. The beauty industry has really flourished in spite of the pandemic.
We're still not investing in what we would call those 'third places,' or places where people can socialize and see each other and meet each other face to face again.
In the early days of the pandemic, there was a real hope in investment in those places, whether they be parks or whether they be schools, or whether they just be town squares.
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