#130 - How Work, Life, and Play Will Change in the Future

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing." -Walt Disney

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

How Work, Life, and Play Will Change in the Future

This week, I wanted to synthesize a couple of 'finds' I've listened to and read over the past week. Taken together, I think they show an interesting macro trend in where and how people will live, work, and play in the future.

I love the intersection of real assets and technology because of the mix of old (we've been building structures for thousands of years) and new, and how they drive human behaviors more than we realize.

In the words of Steve Wynn, the development makes the location, not the other way around. Another way of saying, if you build it (and it's useful / nice enough), they will come!

The following two pieces show the general direction that I believe we're heading in future - more distributed and remote work by location, ease of what I call 'cloud commuting' (h/t John Kennedy for this term), and the economic dispersion away from central business districts.

On remote work and cities of the future (Sidewalk Labs)

This is a wonderful podcast highlighting the future of remote work and Tulsa, OK program that actually pays people to move there if they are remote workers (!). Very insightful.

Lilium partners with Tavistock Development on vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) airport network in Orlando, FL that covers half of Florida (Lilium)

This is the one that gets me incredibly excited about the future. Can you imagine:

- stepping out your back door, overlooking 10 acres of natural, scenic beauty.

- stepping into your electric jet, and taking a quick 30 minute / 60 mile autonomous commute to your office complex's heliport

- stepping into the office by 8:30 AM, and reversing the above at 5 PM

Of course, this won't be the norm for everyone in ten years. But then again, 15 years ago, we didn't even have iPhones.

Just as we built the physical infrastructure of highways to connect economic centers of activity, I believe we're seeing the beginning of the same type of infrastructure being built for the skies.

This, in my opinion, will have massive implications for the biggest cities in 25+ years. Or maybe not.

I've spoken with a friend of mine about this for a while who wanted to develop a new type of community focused around executives who could jet in and out of the large centers of commerce (NYC, DFW, Chicago, LA, SF), but maintain a family and work life balance on weekends that didn't involve taxi horns at 6 am and the cold city. He dubbed these folks 'cloud commuters'. After doing some research, I actually discovered that these communities already exist. Fly-in communities have been around for a while actually.

But autonomous, short flights to neighboring network nodes are the equivalent to last-mile delivery for humans. And once those are accessible to the masses, this might change a lot about how and where people work, live, and play.

I think this is coming faster than most realize.

What do you think the cities of the future will look like?

Will they be more like communities and villages where people are able to hop from one to another with ease?

Will work become more distributed and remote in nature?

Or will the economic gravity of cities continue to force growth in megalopolises and continue to draw people to their cores?

Or something altogether different?

The answer to this question will drive hundreds of billions, if not trillions, in investment in the coming decades.

LINKS

Investing

How SPACs became Wall Street's money tree (Forbes)

Andrew Wilkinson on why he buys certain companies (The Pomp Podcast)

Long feedback loops: writing vs. getting published (John Huber)

Real Estate

Factory based construction in real estate development (Sidewalk Labs)

Matt Onofrio's deep dive on building his commercial real estate portfolio (BiggerPockets)

Home prices are in a bubble, full stop (Bloomberg)

Airbnb's S-1 (SEC)

Blackstone flexes its muscles in Hollywood (Wall Street Journal)

Ken McElroy on the manufactured housing investment space (Ken McElroy)

Technology

Ronan Levy gives an overview of Psychedelics (The Pomp Podcast)

In praise of Maintenance in a world obsessed with Innovation (The Art of Manliness)

John Malone on TMT in a pandemic (Yahoo! Finance)

Top 10 emerging technologies of 2020 (Scientific American)

Relativity Spaces raises $500M (CNBC)

How an immigrant rode the wind energy wave to billionaire status (Forbes)

John Owen - President & CEO of Airshare on private aviation (The Fort Capital Podcast)

Reid Hoffman and Chamath Palihapitiya on angel investing and the future of venture capital (Village Global Podcast)

Geopolitics / Economics

The big lessons of history (Morgan Housel)

Is a Chinese financial crisis looming? (ChinaTalk)