Today’s guest is Dror Poleg, an economic historian who explores how physical and digital systems affect human behavior, well-being, and dignity. Dror joins us on the show to talk about how technology is undermining the basic foundations of real estate’s value and how this is scrambling a lot of what we know about buildings as well as cities. Dror’s thesis is that because of the way technology has enabled remote work and access, people no longer make their choices about where to live for reasons of work and access. Therefore, if you want to attract people to a building, city, or neighborhood, it's less about the location or the physical characteristics of your asset and more about how are you meeting the lifestyle needs of that specific group of people that you're targeting. Dror sketches out different ways in which we could see cities and suburbs changing due to the emergence of residential and office brands that cater to multitudes of customers with specific and idiosyncratic needs. Dror also speaks to how entrepreneurs could take advantage of these changes, how the structure of corporations might change, and how remote work will impact things like innovation and productivity. Tune in today.
Key Points From This Episode:
• Dror’s thesis that technology is undermining the basic foundations of real estate’s value.
• How technology has influenced the reasons behind people’s choices of where to live.
• New factors that are driving value in real estate and shifting it toward being a consumer good.
• How these new forces driving peoples’ decisions about where to live are influencing human settlement patterns or the structure of cities.
• The widening gap between creative high earners and service workers.
• How superstar and second-tier cities will change as a result of these new patterns.
• What suburbs around cities will have to do to remain attractive and accommodate new residents.
• Whether it will be possible to make an economic case for urbanization in suburbs to suit the lifestyle needs of new residents.
• Which historical analogies are most applicable to the current changes in real estate.
• How entrepreneurs can take advantage of these up-and-coming trends.
• Ways in which remote work will change the importance of time zones.
• How WeWork exemplifies capitalizing on these shifting consumer needs for all its faults.
• Different ways that cloud kitchens are changing the urban landscape.
• How these changes will impact productivity over the next 20 years and the tensions it will create.
• The evolution of corporations and how remote work will affect firm formation.
• How remote work will impact innovation and productivity.
• Whether Dror agrees that everybody will be Western-educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic in the next two decades.
• Whether the changes Dror predicts will happen in low-income countries as well.
• How Mayor Saurez has apprehended these movements and could change Miami.
• What the tech diaspora would need to do to keep the places they move to attractive.
• Mark’s thoughts on what remote work will mean for the future of charter cities.
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Dror Poleg
Dror Poleg on Twitter
Mayor Saurez
Charter Cities Podcast