Our lives will
Global business expert Professor Richard Scase says we are on the verge of a revolution that will change the way we live, work and play. Here he looks at how the Covid19 pandemic will alter the character of Kent and its residents forever...
More than 20 years ago, when giving keynote speeches at major corporate events, I was saying the newly-adopted internet would change everything. The overwhelming response was one of variable indifference. The feeling was it may have some uses such as for sending emails but otherwise its impact would be of limited commercial value.
The dotcom boom revolution of the early 2000s that drove many businesses into bankruptcy confirmed the point. There was no money to be made from investing in the internet as a retailing opportunity.
The coronavirus has completely turned these business assumptions upside down. It has brought the internet to the central stage and consolidated the process that started more than two decades ago. There is no going back and the forces that try to stop it will fail. Take, for example, city and town centres, shopping malls and high streets. They can never be revived. They will not become deserted, urban wastelands, but shopping and consumer experience will no longer be their main function.
They will return to their Victorian character as places of living. Take a look at the buildings above street-level shopfronts. They were once the homes of urban families, and their upper floors to this day retain their domestic character. Town centres will again become mainly homes with the provision of ‘niche’ personal services. Hairdressing salons, beauty and nail parlours and fashion accessory stores are already becoming more common in high streets as national stores become impersonal online retailers. Attempts to reverse this trend with online sales taxes will not do the trick.
The coronavirus has introduced shoppers to online shopping and they rather like it. It solves the problems with parking, avoiding polluted and noisy streets and more likely than not,
being served by poorly trained sales staff. Might as well as do it online. The high street big spenders are deserting the high streets like never before. They will never return.
Twenty years ago I said the internet would revolutionise work patterns. Again, the audience response was neutral. The opinion of corporate leaders was employees had to come into work, otherwise nothing would get done.
Development in digital and web technologies making Zoom and other online teamwork possible have destroyed this employer assumption. We now have a Prime Minister telling us to ‘Stay at Home’ during the lockdown and this week pleading for us to get back into the office. But the floodgates have opened with revolutionary ramifications.
Companies now realise their staff can be more productive by working from home. How often in the office do employees have their computers facing walls so their bosses cannot see them on eBay, emailing their friends, and sending online jokes across the
room? How much time is wasted with chatting at the water fountain, especially on Monday mornings?
The shift to home working cuts the need for commuting, reducing road congestion and improving air pollution. A probable outcome will be the renationalisation of the railways, as the present operators cannot pay their way, and bus travel, as already in some countries, being made free.
Lockdown and the benefits of online activities has heightened the awareness of climate
and environmental matters that will change the nature of political debate. It will be taken more seriously.
With the decline of office working, companies will not need the same office space with their upkeep and high overheads. The demand for commercial premises in London will decline. So, too, in towns and cities in Kent. They will be replaced by smaller premises suitable for hot-desking and meetings. Work places become cafes for staff team building and decision making. So why live near to London if it is only a two-days-a-week commute? Why not move out to the leafier, more stress-free countryside of east and south Kent and the ravished seaside coastal towns where there are ample cheap properties ripe for renovation?
But with what consequences? Demand for executive houses in ‘outer’ Kent will boom and so too will prices, affecting the affordability of homes for firsttime buyers. Health, education, welfare and social services will be subject to even greater demand with this population increase. All of this because of an increase in home working. Extraordinary, but true!
The decline of offices near the centre of towns will be a further nail in the coffin of high streets. There will be fewer staff to shop at lunch time or meet in pubs and bars after work. They are being replaced by lower-spending students who use the hairdressing salons, nail bars and inhabit the declining night-time economy.
There will be even fewer students in future. The heyday of three-year residential study is over. The shift to online courses will demolish the 500-year model that has dominated higher education. There will be some lecturer-student face-to-face contact but the weighting will change. Part-time degrees and packages of short-term courses, heavily weighted online, will replace the three-year attendance in lecture theatres. This will have a huge impact on the demand for student and buy-tolet accommodation in towns and cities.
The internet started a transformation that Covid-19 has consolidated. The spring of 2020 marks the beginning of a revolution that will have as great an impact on the county as the industrial revolution of the 19th century. It will shape the economic, social and environmental fabric of Kent for years to come.
Richard Scase is Emeritus Professor at the University of Kent and the author of several books on social, economic and technological change.