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New Lanseria Smart City just papering over the cracks
According to Paragon Group director Henning Rasmuss, with South African cities and towns fast deteriorating at an infrastructure and service delivery level, the new Lanseria Smart City revealed by President Cyril Ramaphosa during this year s State of the Nation Address is just papering over the cracks .
The urgent problems faced by South African cities, from deteriorating infrastructure to rapid urbanisation, are primarily social and economic in nature, says Paragon Group director Henning Rasmuss.
More important work needs to be done, across the country, says Rasmuss. In this regard, a positive outcome of the Covid-19 pandemic has been business and government having “to learn to work together, to build trust, and to get things done in a hurry. The common enemy in the form of the pandemic has brought an urgency to co-operation and co-existence”, he notes.
Next step in remote working likely to be a new hybrid workspace model
The current response to Covid-19 and working from home has many unanticipated pitfalls. The dialogue around culture and new ways of working has been accelerated by Covid-19, which makes this an extremely exciting time to be an architect.
Workspaces must address remote working and entice people back into the office.
We are going to have to design spaces that address the impact of remote working and entice people back into the office.These need to be spaces where culture, connections and workflows can be nurtured and enhanced – meaning we will have to reimagine what the working experience could be.
Rael Levitt
As more consumers continue to opt to buy goods online, as opposed to venturing out to retail store locations and shopping malls, amid the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, it is resulting in a subsequent impact on industrial real estate, specifically the part of the market focused on warehousing and logistics.
To be clear, e-commerce was here to stay long before Covid-19 entered our collective vocabulary, yet the ongoing intersection of e-commerce and logistics, against the backdrop of industrial real estate activity has been accelerated by the global pandemic. This has essentially accelerated the retail evolution, as e-commerce penetration has grown in leaps and bounds since March 2020.