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If we learned anything in 2021, it is that we live in uncertain times. So predicting may seem like a dangerous sport, especially as the global Covid-19 pandemic approaches its third year.

While some trends are decades in the making (housing crisis) others might lean more towards a look into the crystal ball (distributed work model). Either way, we cannot deny our human propensity to want to know the future, and more importantly, to plan for it. As we move into this new year, here are the trends we will be keeping our eyes on, what we think may happen, and how we can plan for our uncertain futures.

The Poly-Centric City

The future of the city, post-Covid-19 pandemic (or once we transition into the endemicity), will be a transition towards a poly-centric and distributed urban agglomeration model. As we鈥檝e seen during our quarantine periods, it is not only possible but at times productive to work from home. We predict that a distributed workplace model will emerge, building off co-working trends from before the pandemic. This shift raises the opportunity to support neighborhood commercial corridors and build in more economic resilience as services cluster around neighborhood live-work hubs.

Additionally, for essential and service workers, a more distributed business district model may enable easier and more equitable access to jobs. Or it could herald the acceleration of ghost stores, ghost kitchens, and micro-distribution centers (think 15-minute grocery deliveries), which could continue to displace local retail and render these workers even more invisible to the average customer. Either way, a shift is occurring as workers disperse from traditional central business districts (CBDs) to other areas.

This prediction comes with the huge caveat that . Telework peaked at 35% in May of 2020, and by the end of this past summer, only 13% worked from home. People who teleworked were much more likely to be highly educated, upper-income, and concentrated in urban centers. While this could have long term impacts on the businesses and office space that rely on people commuting to a CBD, we must remember that these impacts are concentrated and only represent a small portion of the workforce.

Building on this redistribution of commercial activity, we see a rebounding of the culture sector as the importance and impact of our creative industries has been foregrounded during the past two years. Cultural works can be both a celebration and a catalyst for change. While we saw great slow-downs of cultural and media production during the first phases of the pandemic, much of our writing, film, television and media workforce has rebounded, as we鈥檝e seen from our recent studies with the NYC Mayor鈥檚 Office of Media & Entertainment (, ), and we expect this to continue. Additionally, we foresee an increased importance of museums, performance venues and community cultural centers as we return to pre-covid movement patterns. Cultural institutions will continue the recent trend of interdisciplinary cultural spaces that blend into the public realm and have neighborhood satellite spaces 鈥� bringing creative production out into community spaces, as we鈥檝e seen in our work with (FABnyc) in New York鈥檚 East Village.

Infrastructure and Resilience

The passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) demonstrates a commitment to deploying a broad range of infrastructure in our efforts to battle climate change and spur economic recovery. This investment follows in the ideological lineage of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) from the New Deal, after the Great Depression. This bill has the opportunity to shift our relationship with infrastructure 鈥� to see it as an elevating force within our communities and a mode of investing in living sustainably, resiliently, and equitably.

The WPA provided workforce training and education alongside bridge and dam construction. Similarly, we predict that municipalities will develop new ways to tie community revitalization projects to the pillar themes of the IIJA, in particular climate resilience, to garner funding for priority projects and to ensure infrastructure is climate ready. Investments in schools, local services, affordable housing, and more 鈥榮oft鈥� infrastructures will be increasingly defined as essential resilience strategies. Resilient infrastructure will be designed to achieve multiple benefits, acknowledging the intersectional nature of economic recovery, climate resilience, and equity. With a forward-looking lens, infrastructure projects have the potential to create high-quality jobs and to support improved quality of daily life, while also helping to prepare communities for an increasingly disruptive future. These investments are critical opportunities to pave a path for a more expansive long-term approach to climate resilience.

Housing

The housing crisis loomed large in 2021. as home prices and rents rose dramatically in the past year. The average sales price of new homes in the United States rose significantly in 2021. The median home sale price in in November 2021 was $935,000, up by 12% from the previous year, and in it rose by 11%. Meanwhile, the nation became as median rent across the country鈥檚 50 largest metropolitan areas also rose by 11.5% year over year. These trends are worrying as housing costs consume more and more of a household鈥檚 take home pay, and contribute to a national homelessness crisis.

These trends are due to a confluence of factors, including Covid-prompted urban flight to smaller and less dense cities, increased housing demand, and historically low mortgage rates. However, limited supply is a critical factor: there are not enough homes available. The National Association of Realtors reported that between 2001 and 2020 than were built between 1968 and 2000. Restrictive zoning regulations have also contributed to constraining supply and increasing prices in localities all across the country. Simply put, the United States has not been building enough housing to keep up with demand for decades.

The, prompting younger tenants to leave more expensive cities for more affordable locations. In addition, while millennials accounted for more than half of all home-purchase loan applications in 2020, purchases by this demographic have stalled as prices continue to rise and as Wall Street and older buyers snap up the existing housing stock. The benefits of rising home prices generally accrue to homeowners (the majority of whom are over 35), but also ties up a household鈥檚 wealth in an illiquid asset that they also live in.

. Eviction moratoriums are ending, and rising rents have priced people out of urban areas. As a result, rent control has re-emerged as both a viable policy and a campaign issue at the local level.

While market prognoses are mixed, we anticipate a few trends for urban housing in 2022. First, hardship will continue for prospective homeowners and renters as the pandemic continues, inflation reduces buying power, and housing stock remains limited. Second, we expect various policy responses will be deployed to address this crisis, including rent control to support renters and loosening zoning regulations to increase housing supply. Finally, we expect that while many companies will continue to enable remote work in some capacity, an increasing return to office spaces through hybrid or full-time schedules will likely re-shift some of the housing demand back toward urban areas.

Decarbonization

In the United States, buildings account for 39% of total greenhouse gas emissions. , such as gas, oil, and propane, are used for cooking and heating water and indoor spaces. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions will require eliminating most of the carbon consumed for building operations. In recent years, city governments have moved to reduce these emissions to reach larger climate action goals, creating laws that limit or altogether ban the construction of new buildings that use non-renewable energy sources. We expect to see more of these types of laws at the local and state level, especially as new technologies enter the US market and gain widespread acceptance.

In 2019, Berkeley鈥檚 City council passed the first ordinance in the United States requiring electrification of all new buildings (which went into effect in 2020). Across California, more than 50 cities and counties are considering similar policies. In 2021, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio signed a bill into law that will ban new gas hookups in most new construction beginning in 2024, bringing the city one step closer to meeting its 80×50 goals and Paris Climate Agreement commitment. New York state lawmakers are also pushing sweeping measures to require buildings across the state to be all-electric by 2024. If passed, it would be the first state law if its kind in the nation. A number of other states are exploring similar approaches. Nearby, in Massachusetts, the Future of Heat (Bill H.3298) is currently making its way through the legislature, creating structures to allow gas companies to provide and deliver renewable sources of thermal energy. This is a trend we鈥檒l continue to watch.

These moves rely on energy efficient electric stoves, water heaters, heat pumps, solar thermal, and high efficiency insulation. And while the bulk of the energy for these electric devices might come from gas and oil today (although declining due to renewable portfolio standards and targets), the reduction of building-end fossil fuel use and conversion to high efficiency electric devices is by and large much cleaner and energy efficient. These technologies are also safer because they eliminate the potential for gas fires, explosions, and asphyxiation; are beneficial to health through improved indoor air quality; and are more cost effective.

Thank you to all contributors: Sam Frommer, Alice Shay, Louis Spanias, Ubaldo Escalante, Sabrina Bornstein and Adam Friedberg.