Society/Culture Working from home vs forced back to the office

[Cap]

I think CBDs will always exist, but they'll change and the percentage of employees physically attending CBD offices will naturally continue to dwindle over the coming decades. I think we'll see (say) the same office building with 1,000 desks rented by ten employers of 100 desks each rather than five with 200 desks each.

CBD rents will naturally decline with market forces and fewer office buildings will be built, in favour of apartments since I think there will always be a market for singles, couples and students for city living.

Here in Adelaide, 60 King William Street has just finished construction - it was conceived before the pandemic. It's the largest office building in Adelaide by lettable floor area, but its anchor tenants will be Centrelink, Child Support and Medicare, government agencies rather than the private sector. A few hundred metres away, the almost-complete Festival Plaza tower's anchor tenant will be Flinders University.

We have had some big builds go up. I know many tenants have reduced their own foot print too.

I agree though, focus needs to go to getting the CBD population up. I know it's a challenge to refurbishment old office buildings to residential use, but it's not impossible and there are plenty of examples around the world.

 

[Rotayjay]

This reminds me of some issues our local main street was having many years ago.

Tenants were leaving because of high rents and the landlords had the Audacity to run campaigns in the newspapers about the council spending money to bring back customers.

Even the slightest question about rents being too high was dismissed out of hand, it was almost funny, except I believe the councils buckled and gave them subsidies and incentives.

You need to break a few eggs to make an omelette, but there are certain eggs in this country that are sacrosanct. One of them is the ability of private and institutional property investors to make shit loads of money with almost nil risk. By total coincidence, many of our politicians are real estate barons.

 

[Cap]

You need to break a few eggs to make an omelette, but there are certain eggs in this country that are sacrosanct. One of them is the ability of private and institutional property investors to make s**t loads of money with almost nil risk. By total coincidence, many of our politicians are real estate barons.

Spot on, they are happy to lecture mortgage holders about buying within their means, but the moment the reality of Commercial property investment risk raises its head they are all looking for a handout.

 

[peetoo]

This reminds me of some issues our local main street was having many years ago.

Tenants were leaving because of high rents and the landlords had the Audacity to run campaigns in the newspapers about the council spending money to bring back customers.

Even the slightest question about rents being too high was dismissed out of hand, it was almost funny, except I believe the councils buckled and gave them subsidies and incentives.

In feedback online about the CBD, restrictive or expensive parking is mentioned a lot.
As for the train, a Tuesday night a couple of weeks back I saw a 60 minute wait in the boards for one Ringwood line destination

 

[peetoo]

We have had some big builds go up. I know many tenants have reduced their own foot print too.

I agree though, focus needs to go to getting the CBD population up. I know it's a challenge to refurbishment old office buildings to residential use, but it's not impossible and there are plenty of examples around the world.

I’d imagine in a lot of cases older buildings easier to convert than those designed for open floor offices

 

[Cap]

I’d imagine in a lot of cases older buildings easier to convert than those designed for open floor offices

I'm not sure how it works to be honest, I know much of the internals can be gutted, I guess it comes down to where the core is.

The pros and cons of turning office buildings into housing

Around the world, the idea of turning offices underused in the wake of COVID's work-from-home phenomenon into housing is a hot topic. But experts say such projects are few and far between in Australia for a reason, and creating affordable housing from office buildings is harder than it seems.

www.abc.net.au

Found an article which is pretty interesting

 

[Cap]

In feedback online about the CBD, restrictive or expensive parking is mentioned a lot.
As for the train, a Tuesday night a couple of weeks back I saw a 60 minute wait in the boards for one Ringwood line destination

Sensible debate about good reliable PT always gets drowned our by shills who think people are trying to take their cars away and have no understanding of how road infrastructure is funded

 

[Rotayjay]

In feedback online about the CBD, restrictive or expensive parking is mentioned a lot.
As for the train, a Tuesday night a couple of weeks back I saw a 60 minute wait in the boards for one Ringwood line destination

I work in the CBD and I don't want to spend the money parking every work day. I imagine it's cheaper than Melbourne, but even with a medium-term pass it approaches $20 a day. Adelaide's bus and train network is focused on the city and I'm grateful that it works well for me. If you live within reasonable distance, there's always some bus nearby that'll come around every fifteen minutes or so during morning peak. A 28-day public transport pass costs $112.10. If you commute five days per week twice a day, that's about $5.60 per day.

 

[JyeDye]

The only reason I go to the office is to shake some higher ups hands, let them talk about their watches, what their kids are up to, next vacation trip they've got planned. If I'm actually busy I WFH and get 10x more done. I work on projects with people from all over the place anyway so doesn't really matter where I am.

 

[Rotayjay]

An excerpt from the above 26 June article:

​

The shift towards hybrid working wrought by the pandemic is clear.

Over the course of the pandemic, the Property Council of Australia tracked vacancy rates of offices across capital cities.

A recent survey compared occupancy rates with pre-pandemic figures.

Perth and Adelaide had the highest rates, with 80 and 74 per cent respectively, while Brisbane came in third at 67 per cent.

In Sydney, the occupancy rate sat at 59 per cent of pre-COVID levels, while the figure was 57 per cent for Melbourne and just 52 per cent in Canberra.

Urban Design Forum Australia president Leanne Hodyl said the effect of the pandemic on hybrid working was "still a little bit of an unknown".

"It's not a done deal that we won't need as much office space," she said.

"That's still playing out, so rushing to convert all of these buildings is potentially premature.

 

[peetoo]

An excerpt from the above 26 June article:

​

The shift towards hybrid working wrought by the pandemic is clear.

Over the course of the pandemic, the Property Council of Australia tracked vacancy rates of offices across capital cities.

A recent survey compared occupancy rates with pre-pandemic figures.

Perth and Adelaide had the highest rates, with 80 and 74 per cent respectively, while Brisbane came in third at 67 per cent.

In Sydney, the occupancy rate sat at 59 per cent of pre-COVID levels, while the figure was 57 per cent for Melbourne and just 52 per cent in Canberra.

Urban Design Forum Australia president Leanne Hodyl said the effect of the pandemic on hybrid working was "still a little bit of an unknown".

"It's not a done deal that we won't need as much office space," she said.

"That's still playing out, so rushing to convert all of these buildings is potentially premature.

Those rates seem to be linked to the size of the commute ‘problem’ in each particular city. Melbourne and Sydney will grow the fastest so the same city will be able to accommodate the expected extra people with the same infrastructure. The proportion of hybrid or decentralising should stay.

There’s also a between the lines thread in there. Housing is not affordable and neither is office or commercial space, which makes actual business uncompetitive

It’s been great for investment, but overall? Not so much

 

[Rotayjay]

Those rates seem to be linked to the size of the commute ‘problem’ in each particular city. Melbourne and Sydney will grow the fastest so the same city will be able to accommodate the expected extra people with the same infrastructure. The proportion of hybrid or decentralising should stay.

There’s also a between the lines thread in there. Housing is not affordable and neither is office or commercial space, which makes actual business uncompetitive

It’s been great for investment, but overall? Not so much

Australia has become one giant property investment, so that voice is making itself heard loudly in the WFH debate.

 

[Cap]

Australia has become one giant property investment, so that voice is making itself heard loudly in the WFH debate.

I assume being in Adelaide you would recall a group of property investors threatening to sue the council for installing a cbd bike path.

They always make their voice heard, even when not required

 

[Rotayjay]

I assume being in Adelaide you would recall a group of property investors threatening to sue the council for installing a cbd bike path.

They always make their voice heard, even when not required

So did they try to sue over the Frome Street Bikeway?

 

[MPMonkeys]

Do people who strongly advocate for WFH ever consider the extra emissions they are producing every single day compared to if they were all in the one place? How on earth will emissions get to zero if every second dwelling is permanently occupied 24 hours a day - mostly with internet, heating or air conditioners running.

 

[kickazz]

I like the mixed approach.

WFH is better for things that are complex and require a lot of concentration, as Seeds mentioned. Chatter around me can be quite annoying, (I've learnt to filter it out a lot better) and there are still many people that have no idea just how loud they yell into their phones/headsets. It is also easier to get things like documentation done without interruptions.


Working in person is better when collaborating and building relationships. If you have many stakeholders to deal with in person is more expedient. Absence of body language cues in Teams/Zoom meetings cause the brain to work harder (this has been measured) so a day of online meetings can be more fatiguing. I get more out of interpersonal catch-ups with my stakeholders too - they tell you those little things that they are 'too busy' to mention in the day-to-day but come out over a cup of coffee.


Interestingly, as teleconferencing tools got a lot better in the early part of this century, business travel actually increased rather than decreased. It helped create more business connections but in person can make them much stronger.


Whatever your take, one thing that I've mused on for a long time is just how much of a waste peak hour commuting is. All those people. All those cars. All those trains. All that fuel. All that time. In every big city in the world. Every ****en day. Down the toilet.

 

[kickazz]

Do people who strongly advocate for WFH ever consider the extra emissions they are producing every single day compared to if they were all in the one place? How on earth will emissions get to zero if every second dwelling is permanently occupied 24 hours a day - mostly with internet, heating or air conditioners running.

This is a good point - as much as the commute is wasteful, having people co-located and sharing utilities like that is actually quite efficient.

 

[faible]

Do people who strongly advocate for WFH ever consider the extra emissions they are producing every single day compared to if they were all in the one place? How on earth will emissions get to zero if every second dwelling is permanently occupied 24 hours a day - mostly with internet, heating or air conditioners running.

Build more efficient houses; better insulation and use of solar energy for example. If you can power your daily energy usage from solar energy generated while you're at home using that energy, then are emissions higher or lower than commuting in to the city and powering an office?

 

[MPMonkeys]

Build more efficient houses; better insulation and use of solar energy for example. If you can power your daily energy usage from solar energy generated while you're at home using that energy, then are emissions higher or lower than commuting in to the city and powering an office?

Maybe anyone who wants to perm WFH needs to prove that their dwelling is energy efficient by demonstrating that consumption is equal to or less than what you would consume going into the office.

 

[Cap]

So did they try to sue over the Frome Street Bikeway?

It was the East West bike path I believe.

It got so stupid the council missed out on federal funding for it.

 

[Cap]

Do people who strongly advocate for WFH ever consider the extra emissions they are producing every single day compared to if they were all in the one place? How on earth will emissions get to zero if every second dwelling is permanently occupied 24 hours a day - mostly with internet, heating or air conditioners running.

Won't matter as we move towards renewables.

We just need to get the same people who are against WFH to also stop being against the transition to renewables.

 

[faible]

Maybe anyone who wants to perm WFH needs to prove that their dwelling is energy efficient by demonstrating that consumption is equal to or less than what you would consume going into the office.

Seems a bit of a furphy to me personally. Kind of saying that unless a solution is perfect we should ignore it.

WFH has a lot of benefits at a personal level, clears road congestion, and allows CBD space to be reallocated for things other than giant offices for big corporates.

Trying to stop it on the basis of demanding energy efficient homes when in general electronics (computers, lighting etc..) are pretty energy efficient these days is a strange argument.

 

[Cap]

Seems a bit of a furphy to me personally. Kind of saying that unless a solution is perfect we should ignore it.

WFH has a lot of benefits at a personal level, clears road congestion, and allows CBD space to be reallocated for things other than giant offices for big corporates.

Trying to stop it on the basis of demanding energy efficient homes when in general electronics (computers, lighting etc..) are pretty energy efficient these days is a strange argument.

It also raises the question, if we are concerned about energy efficient homes etc.

Should we be also looking at how we use cars. If we are going to force people back i to the CBD we will have to invest heavily in PT to get efficiencies there, take that logic a step further, to enhance the PT improvements surely we'd have to look at banning Cars in CBDs ?

 

[faible]

It also raises the question, if we are concerned about energy efficient homes etc.

Should we be also looking at how we use cars. If we are going to force people back i to the CBD we will have to invest heavily in PT to get efficiencies there, take that logic a step further, to enhance the PT improvements surely we'd have to look at banning Cars in CBDs ?

I'm sure all the anti-WFH types that are very concerned with energy efficient homes would be very concerned with energy efficient modes of transport so would be on board with more PT / improve cycling access / CBD congestion surcharge to discourage driving there.

 

[peetoo]

Do people who strongly advocate for WFH ever consider the extra emissions they are producing every single day compared to if they were all in the one place? How on earth will emissions get to zero if every second dwelling is permanently occupied 24 hours a day - mostly with internet, heating or air conditioners running.

Not sure it’s quite as simple as that. Underutilisation is inefficiency wherever it takes place