The pandemic has also accelerated the trend towards home working for office staff. In many nations, such staff are unlikely to revert fully to pre-COVID working patterns and many major companies including Deloitte, J.P. Morgan, Amazon, Morgan Stanley and Allianz Partners have established a hybrid office/work-from-home policy for the future.
This model is likely to become the norm as digital communications continue to improve. Accordingly, people are reconsidering where they choose to live and, in turn, society’s future requirements for schools, hospitals and other social services are changing. Local development building plans will also have to be rethought.
Commuting has been reduced significantly in most advanced economies, with beneficial effects for the environment. The requirement for train line upgrades and new rail routes are having to be reconsidered along with plans for further road building.
Long-distance travel has also changed because of COVID-19, with the public currently showing a hesitancy to return to long-haul air travel for vacations. This reaction is unlikely to last for long and by 2025, if not sooner, international travel will probably have re-bounded to its pre-COVID levels.
As a result of the pandemic, some trends I identified in the 'World In 2040' have been accelerated while entirely new trends have started to shape our lives. The future has suddenly become a lot closer - particularly in terms of medical science and healthcare provision - and we are even reconsidering where we choose to live and the way in which we work.
