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As promised, below is a list of some of my predictions for this coming year. I have tried to be both punchier and more precise in my prognostications; because, well, obvious predictions are boring and precision will allow me to better evaluate my thinking at the end of the year. So here goes.
2022 will be the year that COVID-19 becomes endemic and finally fizzles out to a point where it no longer factors into our decision making in the same way that it has for most people over the last two years or so. I think this will happen by as early as the summer.
As a result, I think the majority of people will be back in their offices by this September at the very latest, with many coming back much earlier. The whole hybrid/flexible work thing won't completely disappear, but the majority of people who used to work in offices will be back.
Recreational/fringe residential real estate will soften in 2022 as a result of 1) its tremendous run-up during this pandemic and 2) the renewed pull of urban/office life. Conversely, urban apartment rents will continue to rise and eventually surpass their pre-COVID levels. The SF Bay Area could be one exception.
The explosion of travel that I thought was going to happen in 2021, will truly happen this year. The summer will mark its official return, with European travel volumes (to give just one example) returning to their pre-COVID levels.
We will see meaningful efforts to further breakdown the hegemony of single-family zoning throughout many North American cities. This has been building for a number of years and I think we will see some tipping point-like moments in 2022. Specifically, expanded permissions for multi-unit housing and greater densities.
I wish I could say that autonomous vehicles are destined to do something truly remarkable this year, but I think we are still a few years out (2024-2025?) before a large chunk of us are ride-hailing AVs. But on a related note, I do think that Uber will come into its own this year and finally become profitable (and not just with adjusted profits).
Public transit ridership will, unfortunately, remain depressed and below its pre-COVID levels for this entire year. The beneficiaries of this will continue to be cars (not good), bikes, and micro-mobility solutions like e-scooters.
It’s that time of year again. It’s time to make predictions for the upcoming year and time to look back on the ones we all got wrong from a year prior. I don’t recall many people (if any) predicting that a pandemic would cripple the global economy.
I like how Scott Galloway put it in his 2021 predictions post. It’s obviously better to be right than wrong, but it’s okay to be wrong. The value in writing down your thoughts is that it forces you to think. It’s the reasoning that matters. (It’s one of the reasons why some people write blogs.)
A key theme in Galloway’s predictions post is something that he calls “The Great Dispersion.” This involves two things: (1) The physical distribution of products and services over wider areas and (2) the bypassing of gatekeepers and other intermediaries (which is something the internet has always been good at).
You could interpret this as being directly antithetical to cities. Urbanism, after all, is all about agglomerations. But I think it’s more nuanced that that. Cities have generally always had both centralizing and decentralizing forces. The two can co-exist.
I will get into this in more detail in my own 2021 predictions post. But in the mean time, I would encourage you check out what Scott Galloway recently published, over here. And if any of you have any thoughts about what’s in store for us in 2021, please leave a comment below.
Don’t worry, it’s okay if you’re not right.
I have stayed at two hotels over the last month where I did not need to interact with a human as part of the check in process. And in one of those two instances I didn’t even need to interact with a computer at the hotel.
My room key was issued to me through an app and I used that (and Bluetooth) to open my hotel room door (after the app, of course, notified me that my room was ready).
This is prediction #2 in Fred Wilson’s annual roundup of what is going to happen next in the world. Automation is reducing the costs associated with operating many businesses. Who is going to be the beneficiary of this consumer surplus?
The other prediction that should interest most of you — because the impacts would be widespread — is this one here regarding climate change:
The looming climate crisis will be to this century what the two world wars were to the previous one. It will require countries and institutions to re-allocate capital from other endeavors to fight against a warming planet. This is the decade we will begin to see this re-allocation of capital. We will see carbon taxed like the vice that it is in most countries around the world this decade, including in the US. We will see real estate values collapse in some of the most affected regions and we will see real estate values increase in regions that benefit from the warming climate. We will see massive capital investments made in protecting critical regions and infrastructure. We will see nuclear power make a resurgence around the world, particularly smaller reactors that are easier to build and safer to operate. We will see installed solar power worldwide go from ~650GW currently to over 20,000GW by the end of this decade. All of these things and many more will cause the capital markets to focus on and fund the climate issue to the detriment of many other sectors.
For the rest of Fred’s predictions, click here. These are always great reads.
As promised, below is a list of some of my predictions for this coming year. I have tried to be both punchier and more precise in my prognostications; because, well, obvious predictions are boring and precision will allow me to better evaluate my thinking at the end of the year. So here goes.
2022 will be the year that COVID-19 becomes endemic and finally fizzles out to a point where it no longer factors into our decision making in the same way that it has for most people over the last two years or so. I think this will happen by as early as the summer.
As a result, I think the majority of people will be back in their offices by this September at the very latest, with many coming back much earlier. The whole hybrid/flexible work thing won't completely disappear, but the majority of people who used to work in offices will be back.
Recreational/fringe residential real estate will soften in 2022 as a result of 1) its tremendous run-up during this pandemic and 2) the renewed pull of urban/office life. Conversely, urban apartment rents will continue to rise and eventually surpass their pre-COVID levels. The SF Bay Area could be one exception.
The explosion of travel that I thought was going to happen in 2021, will truly happen this year. The summer will mark its official return, with European travel volumes (to give just one example) returning to their pre-COVID levels.
We will see meaningful efforts to further breakdown the hegemony of single-family zoning throughout many North American cities. This has been building for a number of years and I think we will see some tipping point-like moments in 2022. Specifically, expanded permissions for multi-unit housing and greater densities.
I wish I could say that autonomous vehicles are destined to do something truly remarkable this year, but I think we are still a few years out (2024-2025?) before a large chunk of us are ride-hailing AVs. But on a related note, I do think that Uber will come into its own this year and finally become profitable (and not just with adjusted profits).
Public transit ridership will, unfortunately, remain depressed and below its pre-COVID levels for this entire year. The beneficiaries of this will continue to be cars (not good), bikes, and micro-mobility solutions like e-scooters.
It’s that time of year again. It’s time to make predictions for the upcoming year and time to look back on the ones we all got wrong from a year prior. I don’t recall many people (if any) predicting that a pandemic would cripple the global economy.
I like how Scott Galloway put it in his 2021 predictions post. It’s obviously better to be right than wrong, but it’s okay to be wrong. The value in writing down your thoughts is that it forces you to think. It’s the reasoning that matters. (It’s one of the reasons why some people write blogs.)
A key theme in Galloway’s predictions post is something that he calls “The Great Dispersion.” This involves two things: (1) The physical distribution of products and services over wider areas and (2) the bypassing of gatekeepers and other intermediaries (which is something the internet has always been good at).
You could interpret this as being directly antithetical to cities. Urbanism, after all, is all about agglomerations. But I think it’s more nuanced that that. Cities have generally always had both centralizing and decentralizing forces. The two can co-exist.
I will get into this in more detail in my own 2021 predictions post. But in the mean time, I would encourage you check out what Scott Galloway recently published, over here. And if any of you have any thoughts about what’s in store for us in 2021, please leave a comment below.
Don’t worry, it’s okay if you’re not right.
I have stayed at two hotels over the last month where I did not need to interact with a human as part of the check in process. And in one of those two instances I didn’t even need to interact with a computer at the hotel.
My room key was issued to me through an app and I used that (and Bluetooth) to open my hotel room door (after the app, of course, notified me that my room was ready).
This is prediction #2 in Fred Wilson’s annual roundup of what is going to happen next in the world. Automation is reducing the costs associated with operating many businesses. Who is going to be the beneficiary of this consumer surplus?
The other prediction that should interest most of you — because the impacts would be widespread — is this one here regarding climate change:
The looming climate crisis will be to this century what the two world wars were to the previous one. It will require countries and institutions to re-allocate capital from other endeavors to fight against a warming planet. This is the decade we will begin to see this re-allocation of capital. We will see carbon taxed like the vice that it is in most countries around the world this decade, including in the US. We will see real estate values collapse in some of the most affected regions and we will see real estate values increase in regions that benefit from the warming climate. We will see massive capital investments made in protecting critical regions and infrastructure. We will see nuclear power make a resurgence around the world, particularly smaller reactors that are easier to build and safer to operate. We will see installed solar power worldwide go from ~650GW currently to over 20,000GW by the end of this decade. All of these things and many more will cause the capital markets to focus on and fund the climate issue to the detriment of many other sectors.
For the rest of Fred’s predictions, click here. These are always great reads.
2021 was a huge year for NFTs and other fun stuff like digital fashion. Given these trends, I believe there will be growing demand from people to better integrate their digital and physical lives through technologies like augmented reality. Snap has been at the forefront of this space for many years and 2022 will be an important year for its Spectacles (AR glasses). But Apple and others will also make major announcements.
Miami's ascent as an important tech hub will get interrupted by questions surrounding the climate crisis and its own resilience. At the time of writing this post, the price of carbon on the EU's Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) is about €80 per tonne. I think we will see it break €125 per tonne this year, and possibly go even higher.
Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Solana (in this order) will be the top three cryptocurrencies according to market cap by the end of the year. At the time of writing this post, their market caps are $446 billion, $895 billion, and $55 billion, respectively. I am also expecting some breakout web3 consumer applications that will push, maybe, 40% of Canadians and Americans into the crypto space.
2021 was a huge year for NFTs and other fun stuff like digital fashion. Given these trends, I believe there will be growing demand from people to better integrate their digital and physical lives through technologies like augmented reality. Snap has been at the forefront of this space for many years and 2022 will be an important year for its Spectacles (AR glasses). But Apple and others will also make major announcements.
Miami's ascent as an important tech hub will get interrupted by questions surrounding the climate crisis and its own resilience. At the time of writing this post, the price of carbon on the EU's Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) is about €80 per tonne. I think we will see it break €125 per tonne this year, and possibly go even higher.
Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Solana (in this order) will be the top three cryptocurrencies according to market cap by the end of the year. At the time of writing this post, their market caps are $446 billion, $895 billion, and $55 billion, respectively. I am also expecting some breakout web3 consumer applications that will push, maybe, 40% of Canadians and Americans into the crypto space.
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