Offices and cities after coronavirus
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 8 June 2020
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Does commuting into the office have a future? Manuela Saragosa speaks to Mike Hampson, chief executive of Bishopsgate Financial, which has permanently closed its office in London's financial district in favour of home working. Luke Philpott from the commerical property agents DeVono Cresa describes the steep drop in demand for office space during the lockdown, while Tom Carroll from the commercial property company JLL argues that the office still has a crucial role to play in company life. And urbanist Richard Florida from the University of Toronto explains why cities will continue to be vital centres of business and innovation, despite the impact of the virus.
(Photo: The skyline of London's financial district, Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | After an explosion in space, now it's the climax of the rescue mission. |
| 0:05.4 | Can the astronauts be brought home safely? |
| 0:08.6 | What could we have missed? |
| 0:10.6 | This can't be happening. |
| 0:12.5 | You could hear a pin drop. |
| 0:18.6 | 13 minutes to the moon from the BBC World Service, the final episode. |
| 0:24.9 | Available now. |
| 0:28.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC with me, Manuela Saragossa. |
| 0:33.6 | Coming up, does the office have a future after the coronavirus? |
| 0:37.7 | We certainly wouldn't have made this move if we hadn't had the pandemic. |
| 0:41.9 | We will still get together on a periodic basis, but we don't see the need to have permanent |
| 0:46.1 | real estate of our own in the city. |
| 0:48.0 | And what does that mean for the future of cities? |
| 0:51.0 | There will be less demand for big office towers, and companies will decide it's more |
| 0:55.4 | efficient to have more people work remotely. But there's very little indication that young people |
| 0:59.4 | who have driven the urban revival will move out of cities. That's all here in Business Daily from |
| 1:05.1 | the BBC. Now, it's Monday morning, so we sent out our reporter Elizabeth Hotson to check out what the coronavirus rush hour looks like in London's financial district. |
| 1:19.6 | I'm walking down Bishop's Gate, the main street running through London's famous, a square mile. |
| 1:25.6 | Up until a few months ago, it was the beating heart of the UK's |
| 1:28.9 | Financial Services District, and this area would have been packed with bankers and office workers. |
| 1:34.3 | But since lockdown measures were introduced here, the area has been a shadow of its former self. |
| 1:39.9 | The bars are closed, the banks are running on skeleton staff, and most workers are staying at home. |
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