What impact is the creative class having on housing types or features?
For members of the creative class, the idea of living in one place and commuting to another is over. Their work patterns are very much 24/7. Because they spend more time working in their home, their housing needs to accommodate the new combinations of live-work. The real estate sector also needs to invent new types of intermediate work spaces outside the home for them. Too often, the only options for alternative work space today are a coffeehouse or a hotel lobby. I tell my friends who are real estate developers that when they do a major new development, they have to think not only about places for living and working but also about “third places” that can be used for business meetings and as alternative work spaces. What else are you tracking that could emerge as an important trend? I’m keeping an eye on the rise of what I call the “super-multiple households”—that is, the growing number of people who have two or three homes that they use a great deal. Communities are going to have to a
