¿Cómo será? La vida después de Covid-19

What will it be like? Life after Covid-19

Cuento corto / Short story

On the future of the relationship between home and workspace. A tale of two neighbours working from home.

Pauline de Vathaire

Our cities are the convergent nods of our territories, a great amount of our flows, may it be humans, food, goods or traffic, goes to them, comes from them and derives from them. The attraction of living in the cities comes from the vast panorama of facilities they host, their historical value, the connectivity they offer and the labour markets they sustain. This last one in particular, the employment capacity, is definitely greater in the cities and even greater in the bigger ones.

But, for some the city life fulfills it all and for others it lacks. It lacks in nature, in proximity, in large spaces. And for a portion of them the main, if not the only, reason anchoring their living habitat in the city is the physical location of their work.

With the rise of new technologies and the social transformations that came with them, a new way of working that didn’t need one’s presence in order to accomplish his work started to emerge for some, the home office. The living space and the working space could become one entity and transpose itself, potentially, anywhere.

And small steps by small steps, the paradigm of the dependence between living and working could have switched very slowly, due to the gradual acceptance of home office, in the course of the next decades, if it hadn’t been for the striking current pandemic we were experiencing.

All of a sudden the workplace has become a place of danger, of possible contamination, and our governments emphasized that anyone that could do so better be working from home.

So what if the current situation we were thrown in could indeed end in an opportunity to revise the relationship between home and workspace and how would that affect our cities?

Here is a case, in the form of a short story, of two neighbours living on the same floor, sharing a separation wall, and getting along well together. Let’s call them A and B.

From the moment the lock-down was declared A and B started working from home. And as A couldn’t go out, she spent the late afternoon after work at her balcony, B did the same and they went on to share a few drinks and conversations from a safe distance, A on her balcony and B on hers.

As time went by the situation settled in, A and B got accustomed to work from home. One night they were discussing this new lifestyle and both agreed it could work for them in the long run, maybe not all the time but mostly like this, and it definitely had its advantages.

A then realised that if home office was an option a few years ago she wouldn’t have moved to the city. Yes, part of her liked it, but an even greater part of her wished to stay in the small town she came from. As there were no work opportunities there she had to make the move. But she was missing her family, she was missing doing gardening on the weekends in the backward of the house she had, she was missing how everything was a short walk away. And being locked inside her small city flat she kept thinking about it all night. A night full of what if. What if she could again, in the future, chose to stay or to live where she truly wanted to. What if living where your work is wasn’t a sine qua none for getting the job?

The next day A told B that if her office would be open to the idea she would make the move back. B was saddened by the idea that her neighbour would no longer be. But what neither she, nor A, could realise was what would ensue following this move. Because A wouldn’t be alone in taking this step. Hundreds, thousands and eventually hundreds of thousands others would do the same.

And the move of, even a small, portion of the city population, would in turn have a growing effect in the places they went to. For more people are coming to live in a small place and more groceries shops, medical facilities, etc. are needed which spurs the dynamic of the local job market. And more people would find work connected to these places. The move would then become synonymous with a revitalization of the small towns, the villages and countryside.

Should we push further the narrative of this exode and fast-forward in time, we would see that this transfer could also enhance the quality of life of those staying in the city. As the demand for housing estate lowers a bit, more living spaces could become available, and potentially more affordable. Home office would also lead to less traffic that could in turn lower the levels of pollution in the city center.

So will it happen or will this stay merely an utopic vision towards freedom of lifestyles? For all the pessimist predictions couldn’t prepare us for what happened in these difficult times and uncertainty keeps looming, we might as well chose to imagine possible optimistic outcomes for they give us something we are in dire needs of : hope in what is to come.

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Próxima interrogativa | Next interrogative

Si el futuro es femenino, ¿por qué no defender a todas las mujeres diseñadoras? Será que podemos redefinir el éxito y diseñar una profesión basada en el cariño hacia nosotras mismas como hacia los demás?

If the future is female why not stand up for all female-identifying designers? Can we define success and craft a meaningful career caring for us and others?