Melodi
Disaster Cat
Oh, my housemate just pointed out that the idea of "local hubs" is already happening in Ireland with some of the universities and "Third level" (non-highschool) colleges here.
She also thought it likely that the way forward might be having such local hubs that corporations could either set up or more likely contract space in that would let employees "use a real office" when one was needed - say the training of new employees over a couple of weeks or in my housemate's case - need to print out building plans on a professional computer.
She said for the moment, the Universities are using spaces set up for the horrible "Make-Work" programs the government was contracting out to the US until they discovered that just like in the US they are happy to take tax-payer funding and keep re-training people with the same courses over and over again - and that in a rural area with no jobs, that training is pretty useless anyway.
I think there are also nearly dead "We-Work" startups that could simply be bought out or rented to do the same thing - the difference is these places would be LOCAL to where many people live and BACK-UPS to the Home Office - not a return to giant highrises in over-crowded, dirty, dangerous downtown areas.
In the case of London, the local government really has only themselves to blame; they thought they had the golden goose forever and just kept increasing "congestion charges" which meant paying about 20 dollars any time someone drove through the City, Commuter Trains costing about 6 to 8 thousand dollars a year if you lived in a Sattelite town and just expecting that people would keep doing this forever.
The gravy train is over, at least for now; and the high costs of living in London mean most people not on executive-level salaries can't live there or have to have some form of subsidized housing (if they didn't inherit a home or live with family).
As in teachers, nurses, firefighters, police, etc mostly need to be subsidized housing or they live outside of London and that's going to be the next wave of problems - maybe convert some of those office blocks in actually affordable apartments (or base the rents on wages?)
She also thought it likely that the way forward might be having such local hubs that corporations could either set up or more likely contract space in that would let employees "use a real office" when one was needed - say the training of new employees over a couple of weeks or in my housemate's case - need to print out building plans on a professional computer.
She said for the moment, the Universities are using spaces set up for the horrible "Make-Work" programs the government was contracting out to the US until they discovered that just like in the US they are happy to take tax-payer funding and keep re-training people with the same courses over and over again - and that in a rural area with no jobs, that training is pretty useless anyway.
I think there are also nearly dead "We-Work" startups that could simply be bought out or rented to do the same thing - the difference is these places would be LOCAL to where many people live and BACK-UPS to the Home Office - not a return to giant highrises in over-crowded, dirty, dangerous downtown areas.
In the case of London, the local government really has only themselves to blame; they thought they had the golden goose forever and just kept increasing "congestion charges" which meant paying about 20 dollars any time someone drove through the City, Commuter Trains costing about 6 to 8 thousand dollars a year if you lived in a Sattelite town and just expecting that people would keep doing this forever.
The gravy train is over, at least for now; and the high costs of living in London mean most people not on executive-level salaries can't live there or have to have some form of subsidized housing (if they didn't inherit a home or live with family).
As in teachers, nurses, firefighters, police, etc mostly need to be subsidized housing or they live outside of London and that's going to be the next wave of problems - maybe convert some of those office blocks in actually affordable apartments (or base the rents on wages?)