Written by:
John Jackson
Industry Editor
Since the end of March I’ve been to the petrol station two times, spending a total of £60 on petrol for my car, and currently the tank is three quarters full.
I very much like that my average weekly spend on petrol is roughly just £2 per week, and to achieve this I haven’t had to do anything special. My reduction in car usage started when we first went into lockdown, and living by a main road I was taken aback by the silence that replaced the constant rumble of tyres passing my home. I sensed the air was cleaner and nature, especially in the form of birdlife, became so much more apparent. Even with the lifting of lockdown I didn’t feel the urge to go back to sitting in traffic queues to get to meetings. Instead the Zoom phenomenon has transformed my working life allowing me to attend more meetings, widen my network and get more work done all from the comfort of home.
During that first lockdown, through social media I could see that many people were commenting on how good it felt to not be rushing everywhere, and the favourable weather certainly helped to create (even amidst a pandemic) the sense that a better, more natural future that could be ours. Then lockdown lifted and the cars returned as many people took the opportunity to get back to a version of normality. For our built environment it made me realise just how important familiarity is to people and businesses. The pandemic took everyone out of their comfort zone in an instance and even today, some nine months later, the signs are still all too evident that there is a real desire to get back to life exactly as it was.
But can it ever be the same again? And more importantly, shouldn’t we be open in asking ourselves: Was it such a good life? There isn’t a singular answer to this question, instead the answer depends on personal experiences and expectations within the built environment. If you’re in employment, living in your own home, bringing up your family and paying your bills on time, the answer is more likely to be – yes it was a good life. Even though you may have accepted long commutes, long working hours, a big mortgage on a small house, a lack of free time, and a need to always shop for the cheapest regardless of who made it or where it came from.
For the increasing number of people with low or no income, on a housing waiting list, using a foodbank, and having no choice of where to shop. Any form of good life will almost certainly be a distant dream that can’t be indulged in when choices between heating or food have to be made instead. It’s a stark illustration of just how differently our built environment works for different people, and there are many other examples that can illustrate this.
Even though our pre-pandemic world was far from perfect, its familiarity was in essence our comfort zone, and in that respect it's understandable that people have a desire to get back to it. I suspect for many business owners the same applies, and you can sense a real eagerness to get back to “business as usual”. It's what we know, what we do and how we like to get things done.
Or is it a case that things have changed forever, and we simply won’t ever truly be able to return to how things were? For example, ahead of the pandemic our economy was over dependent on the retail and hospitality sectors, and Covid19 has had an accelerating impact here. Equally, working from home is working and looks set to stay. It could even become the mainstream way for many of us to work in the future. This, as is well documented, is raising questions around the future role of our urban centres, and comes at a time when thinking around the built environment is seeing a significant shift towards making places more people centric based on the principles of placemaking.
Factor in the need to create new ways of living that are in harmony with our environment and no matter who we are, or what type of business we run or work for, our lives are going to be lived in a very new built environment. I believe this is a rare opportunity for Wales to embrace the future, one where we can:
- create new opportunities as we become a zero carbon nation
- put community involvement at the heart of our urban regeneration programmes
- encourage and support our small business community to flourish
- identify ways to grow a diverse range of medium sized businesses across the country
- focus on repurposing our towns and cities to make them more attractive, more liveable and more sustainable
- end the housing crisis
- see an active growth in cooperatives, coworking and community enterprise
- through education and training provide new opportunities for the more highly skilled and better paid jobs of the future, particularly in construction, retrofit and technology
- improve everyone's heath by the more widespread adoption and promotion of wellbeing.
The changes that will deliver much of the above are in many respects either work that is already in progress, or gaining ground in the thought processes of decision makers. For businesses across Wales this is the perfect time to take a closer look at what is being proposed as significant new opportunities will emerge.
A highly informative starting point is the Manifesto for the Future published by the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, and I asked the Commissioner, Sophie Howe to explain why we need to build a new future for Wales. Sophie explains that: “People power drives change and this year, people have collectively told our politicians that they don’t want to go back to the old ways of doing things.
“This is a reset moment, and in Wales, we have this pioneering piece of legislation in the Well-being of Future Generations Act, that allows us to do things differently in response to the pandemic. Ideas like a basic income and a shorter working week are gaining traction and the Act’s made changes to how we’re planning transport and how we better connect people and invest in skills and training to help us all transition to a better future.
“My Manifesto for the Future is about reminding politicians that policies and decisions have to show people they’ll be supported to live fulfilling lives after COVID-19, and that they’re learning from past mistakes where unsustainable growth was valued over well-being.”
This new built environment would be very different to the one we live in today. It's one that would help to ensure we:
- protected our environment
- improved the wellbeing of all our citizens
- created more attractive people centric urban centres
- focused on creating new skilled jobs to deliver the transformation
- created new opportunities for small businesses across Wales.
Personally I believe this is an exceptional time for Wales to embrace this opportunity to transform our built environment to create a sustainable, ethical and potentially very prosperous future for us all.
