The Perfect Storm

I fully understand the increasingly short attention spans we all have, scrolling through the LinkedIn homepage in the morning, wanting to read an article of interest later, never being able to find it again, or forgetting about it altogether.

So, in the interest of brevity and much-needed levity, I'll add to the innumerable pages of year-end editorials, predictions, and prognostications of pundits the world over, by my own incongruous and bizarre takes on what's in store for 2022 under the superfluous title of The Perfect Storm / Covid, Climate, Cities, and China.

Alliteration aside, here are my seat-of-the-pants prophecies.

• On March 23rd (pick a date, any date) Delta (δ) and Omicron (o) will vanish and xi (ξ) will take over. Despite its pseudonym as the "killing vector", this will be an increasingly milder form of flu, all mask mandates will be abolished, social distancing will be a thing of the past, the Democrats will handily win the 2022 mid-terms……. but I digress.
• Talking of Xi, China will have taken a complete about-turn in its quest for global dominance. Saddled with the Evergrande implosion and other property magnates' dollar-denominated debts, the country will exude more humility, become more collaborative, less authoritarian and bellicose, and more sympathetic to tutors, effeminate men, and gamers. I also want to sell refrigerators to Eskimos.
• The former President will unexpectedly support the Climate Change initiatives and become a vociferous defender of democratic rule and mandates. He will also name Greta Thunberg as his Vice President for the 2024 elections. Great! Again!
• COP27 in November at Sharm El-Sheikh on the Red Sea will be an astounding success. The agenda will include more ponderous speeches by John Kerry and Lord Norman Foster. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia's MBS will continue to tout The Line, NEOM, and OXAGON in full-page ads in the WSJ and FT as climate-sensitive game-changers in 51-degree Celsius environments. There goes the effort to curtail global warming to 1.5 degrees!
• Bjarke Ingles of BIG will go beyond "Hedonistic Sustainability" and design Telosa, the most sustainable and utopian city in America. Oh, wait, he's already done that. Time to concoct another catchy aphorism and design a brand-new desert city …. for MBS. Oh, wait!
• Cities will continue to thrive and existing office towers will be converted to inviting biophilic and living-breathing machines with verdant sky-gardens. The C-Suite occupants and collaborators will allow its employees to work from wherever, and whenever they feel like; shopping malls will all be renamed "Experiential Cities"; cinemas will add more show timings as they can't handle the overflow crowds on Tuesday afternoons; AMC stock will rise to the stratosphere and compete with Berkshire Hathaway's Class A shares, and concerts and cultural events will be front and center in Chicago and Chongqing. Also, CBD is now freely available across most of the country.
• Concrete will become greener in its constitution, the built environment industry will responsibly try to reduce its 40% of carbon emissions, mass-timber will continue to gain more legitimacy and popularity, life-cycle costs and embodied energies will be better analyzed and more contained, architects and engineers will be more focused on making buildings healthier instead of prettier, and container ships will be off-loaded in nano-seconds. At least most of these notions are achievable.

More cynical predictions periodically in 2022!