Written 10/14/2020

San Francisco and other high-density cities like New York and Chicago will return to their established prominence. There is no question in my mind. The following is an opinion piece on the psychological state of the population and how that relates to cities, corporate productivity, urban culture, and real estate value.

The 3 reasons why San Francisco will bounce back:

• We Have Short Term Memories
• Human Nature
• Capitalism

The human species in general has a very short-term memory. It’s true of almost every tragedy, just as it is of every accomplishment. We generally forget things pretty quickly. We forget our heroes, we forget about the people at our old workplace we had a conflict with, and we forget how we felt when we were with our ex’s.

We will forget about that time we weren’t allowed to be within 6 feet of each other.

Whether that’s in 2025, or 2028, nobody knows, but it will happen. You’ll link up with an old friend you spent a lot of time with during the pandemic and reminisce about how crazy the world was, with little to no recollection of the feelings you are feeling now. Harsh, but mostly true.

The current media push around mass exodus’ from major cities and plummeting real estate values is a dangerously short term view. Reasons for wanting more space, a house with a yard, and more square footage are all valid. Honestly, the best move I made was leaving the Mission and heading north to Tiburon. I love it here, summer has reminded me of my childhood being out in the ocean every day. I didn’t feel I had enough space to thrive where I was before the move, I lost creativity, I wasn’t performing well at work or showing up in my relationships.

I mention this to create context around short-term psychology; instant gratification. We are human after all, we run toward pleasure, but the stronger and more innate drive is to avoid pain at all costs.

Living in major cities during a lockdown, particularly downtown or in surrounding high-density areas, in buildings with beautiful amenities that are all closed due to COVID-19, isn’t fun. You hear the stories of the living conditions in downtown buildings right now, all gearing toward tails of confinement and isolation. The loneliness, the disconnection.

We are a tribe-based species, this was never going to bode well for us.

With numerous major companies ending their leases in San Francisco this summer, it’s easy to see a trend-line of a corporate exodus, too. But once again, dangerously near-sighted. The short-term (there’s that phrase again) gain from saving big bucks on leases while employees are working from home indefinitely is obvious. What’s not so obvious is the quality of work being performed from home.

After speaking with clients who run small to medium-sized businesses, it’s pretty clear none of them are happy with the current state of their company compared to their 2020 projections. Employee productivity & buy-in as well as company culture have taken a hit with Zoom meetings and virtual interaction. Not being able to see your favourite colleagues and work-friends every day has been tough for all of us. Those friendships were our escape from the suck of working day after day in pursuit of our professional goals. It takes a special breed to thrive on their own and outperform their previous bests in this current work environment.

Parents working from home with kids in the house have a substantially harder mountain to climb. They’ve adopted new roles throughout the workday that include lunch-maker, cleaner, participating in play-time, and running errands when school or daycare might have had those responsibilities in the past. The need to immediately develop the ability to focus for bursts of time between the kids banging on the office door because they can’t find food in the pantry sounds so difficult. I tip my hat to you for persevering.

The murmurings of employee unhappiness are rising, too. People are stuck at home in Zoom meetings during the workday, then doing the actual work of their jobs at all other hours of the day because there isn’t a whole lot else to do.

After all, you work at Google to ride bikes around campus, eat at the cafeterias and see your friends, not because you love staring at your laptop. I think an underlying feeling in the workforce is a lot of employees would quit their jobs if they could find work elsewhere.

It’s not as fun anymore.

No matter how good the technology enabling us to work remotely becomes, the tribal instinct will remain. We need to be around each other.

The Bay Area is expanding right now as people move farther and farther away from the epicenter of the Silicon Valley. If we are allowed to be within 6 feet of each other within a year or two, though, like an exhale after an inhale, the trend will reverse and the Bay Area will constrict. Moving to Sacremento sounded good for a few weeks there, but it’s hard to see the future of AI, Machine Learning, VR, and Cryptocurrency all finding enough talent to push the needle in the Central Valley.

As soon as we can be, it’s almost inconceivable for companies not to see to see the advantage of being  in an urban environment and hotbed for employee talent. Having teams around each other in the same building has an immeasurably positive effect on businesses, from communication and training to culture and happiness, it’s hard to see our species shifting away from enjoying being around each other.

The businesses that endure and remain in the city will adopt all the talent of people that didn’t leave the city when their company did. Big corporate will race back to the security and infrastructure a big city provides, and people living in the suburbs will find themselves sitting in traffic on the bridge again.

We will reminisce about the time that we couldn’t be within 6 feet of each other, just like we forgot how scared we were about the Y2K Bug & and how convenient it was when our data was on USB drives and burnt CD’s instead of in 10lb binders.

When that day comes and you’re sitting around in the home that you bought at a discount during the pandemic in San Francisco, a mecca for innovation and growth, you will be grinning from ear to ear, proud that you acted on the instinct telling you now is a good time to buy.

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