JOAN MULLER: Recycling of empty offices may become world’s next big challenge
What to do with the glut of (half) vacant office buildings dotted across global business hubs? That’s a question increasingly occupying the minds of players in commercial real estate, a sector which has added so many new buzz-words to its lexicon it’s hard to keep up with the meaning of it all. We barely had a chance to wrap our heads around the “co-working” or “flex” office trend before the coronavirus rudely thrusted concepts such as “remote”, “virtual”, “hybrid”, “repurposed’’ and ‘’solo’’ work spaces upon us.
Whether or not you’re au fait with any of these phrases, one thing seems sure: the onset of Covid-19 has irrevocably changed how and where people work. And while the debate rages on about the extent that work-from-home and the “Zoom boom” will become a permanent post-pandemic fixture in our lives, urban planners, developers and real estate investors are already looking at ways to recycle what could become a growing tally of mothballed buildings in many of the world’s ...
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