Living in a Concrete Jungle City v The Suburbs or Rural Living

Ever since the covid-19 crisis hit our world, it appears that business, government, and employees have taken the step to enable and allow, working from home arrangements. This has benefited employees in eliminating commuting times and provided the obvious benefit to families. It was an idea that was only ever hypothesised, but never really attempted widely, until now.

The ‘stay at home’ set up has reduced, or even eliminated transmission(s) of the virus. With this model, it is showing fantastic benefits to all stakeholders, both employees and employers.

Some jurisdictions have returned to work fully, and it appears that the work from home model, was and perhaps will be the future of work. All of this is because it is difficult for people to resume piling into transport or buildings, after being away from the rat race. The benefits are clear. Here is a brief list of the benefits:

• Less pollution from vehicular traffic on the roads.
• Less traffic and road maintenance.
• Less overhead for business, such as large building rentals.
• Shared office space, minimising more costs.
• Better employee family time and quality of life, with more time for hobbies.
• Less time in the artificial cities with no green or natural features.
• Reduces the need to further develop ‘heat islands’ of the big cities.
• Local shopping experiences, often better.

As can be seen, for the sake of humanity, we need to make effective permanent change to the way of thinking towards work and the model of the big cities. Less employment options are available these days, and with the demise of the manufacturing sector and the technology boom, they have removed jobs (unless you work in the technology sector).

How on earth can the concrete jungle big cities, ever be a better proposition? Big cities have several pitfalls, let me list some:

• Higher crimes.
• Unnatural living.
• Commuting and transport.
• Traffic congestion.
• Pollution.
• Disconnected social circles and the chase of making it ‘big’ in the ‘big smoke’ often has the collateral of ruining complex social set-ups, replaced with artificial and perhaps pretentious versions online. e.g., keeping up with the Joneses.
• Heat islands and other major impacts on the environment (less greenery).

It is evident now, why the big cities are struggling to attract back the people that the cities relied upon. Could it be that the people have finally realised that the lure of lush countryside’s, beaches, gardens, lakes, and nature is the inner urge we have always had and is the better, healthier way of living. Will we miss the big cities? Perhaps. Will we want to continue growing the big cities, perhaps not. Perhaps it is time that we stop funnelling people into big cities, which are usually maxed out in capacity and let us have a distributed approach to employment so that housing affordability is improved.

We could even return to the classic towns full of wonderful people interacting at markets and local shopping centres and strips whilst building social circles that are positive to a better way of life for our future generations.