Where (and how) will we live & work in 2035?

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For today’s Forum Playback, we're venturing a decade ahead with Dasha Badrawi, Ahmed El Alfi, and Hanan Abdelmeguid - alongside our co-founder and special issues editor Hadia Mostafa. And they’ll try to answer the question: Where and how will we live and work in 2035?

Apparently we might find ourselves at ‘Destination dwell time’ - where we will live, work, and collaborate. 

And the path that’s shaping this place – well, it’s influenced by a jumble of forces. There are the lingering shifts of a post-covid world. The challenge of navigating the ways AI will inhabit our lives. And then there's a new generation - headstrong on its needs.

But that's enough framing from me. The conversation can speak for itself.

Here it is, as it happened live… 

Panel begins:

P.F: Ladies and gentlemen, our next panel is probably the most Egyptian panel we are going to talk about today. It is the intersection of where we will live, where we will work, and how we will work in 2035. So you've got real estate—first homes and second homes. You've got office space—that's real estate again. And you have artificial intelligence. Here to walk us through the discussion is Hadia Mustafa, my co-founder, my friend, and my business partner.

Hadia Mostafa [H.M]:

So, for the next 30 minutes, I'd like all of you to put your futurist hats on. I know that's a difficult job, and I want you all to try to imagine life 10 years from now. But before we go to the future, I'd like us to take stock of where we are today because a lot has happened in the past five years with COVID, with AI; a lot of changes have taken place.

So, maybe we'll start with you, Dasha, if you can just take stock of what you think are the major trends that have taken place in the past five years and how those trends are going to set up the stage for where we're going in the next 10 years.

Dasha Badrawi [D.B]:

Thank you, Hadia. Thank you for having me. Good morning, everybody. 

It's a very tough panel, starting with a very tough question, but I'll try and distill a little bit. For the last five years, we've been recovering from COVID. We've been operating in a very challenging environment with very high interest rates, with consumer spending and generally discretionary spending very squeezed. We've seen lots of changes in laws along the residential and commercial.

I think that we've seen a trend of, first of all, a flight from the cities to the suburbs. I think it started with the residential, then it moved to the commercial, covering the office and the retail and obviously everything else. I remember when we first started seeing those trends in the West, it was just the residential, and there was even a little bit of a trend of people flocking back because the services weren't there. I think the services have all caught up. We've seen successful examples and we've seen unsuccessful ones.

The trend that we're seeing very clearly now is the convergence of the uses together and the rising up of mixed-use environments. I don't like to use these kinds of forums to promote, but I have to talk about District 5 as an area that has really, I think, been at the forefront of combining the residential with the retail, with the commercial, with the services, and creating destinations where people can interact and can walk and can dwell. We've heard about trying to increase dwell time in malls and in retail environments, but I think that's now happening in offices. And as we move forward to the impact of AI, I think people still need places to interact, and I think that the offices in these mixed-use environments will be the center of that activity.

H.M: Yes. And I think District 5 captured a lot of these trends. I'm just curious, did it start out as something and turn into something else?

D.B: Yes.

H.M: Successfully though. Okay - Ahmed, if we can go to you next. You have always been a visionary in terms of recognizing very early on, even before COVID, even before AI, that the nature of our work environment is evolving and changing. The Greek Campus—I can't remember which year that launched, but...

Ahmed El Alfi [A.A]:

2012 or '13.

H.M: Yeah. So, what do you see as the biggest trends that have taken place and how they're going to get us forward?

A.A: I think to extract some of what Dasha mentioned, people are going to find places to live, work, and collaborate. I discount the "play" part a little bit. Because the digital aspect of that will allow you to do that almost anywhere. The other thing I wanted to highlight is the migration from city to suburb. I am actually looking at migration from overseas back to Egypt of the highest quality talent. 

Some really, really sharp people are now looking at what everybody here has contributed to building as a place I want to come back to and I want to raise my kids here, and it's become a very viable option, competitive to the West and even the GCC. So, the depth of what we have here has become very attractive, and I think that's one of the things that we need to leverage.

H.M: And that brings us to Hanan. Hanan, you've collaborated and partnered with both Dasha and Ahmed with the Greek Campus and with District 5. Can I get your view?

Hanan Abdel Meguid [H.A]:

Post-COVID, in my opinion, there's a very big societal shift that the priorities of humans became wellness, health, and work-life balance. This changed the whole way we look at workspaces and the way we live. There's also an aesthetic shift because we love the outdoors and we want to bring the outdoors indoors. There's a very big design shift to bring culture and to bring all the biophilic kind of design aspects into the indoor and into the way we organize the way we work and and the way we live. So that's a huge trend and it's going to continue.

H.M: Okay. And now let's move the conversation over to a topic that we've touched upon with all of our panels this morning, which is AI. New products are being launched every day. Nobody really knows what the future is going to bring, even if they tell you they do. But for the purposes of our discussion, I'd like to look at the impact of AI on jobs.

The CEO of Anthropic recently said that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs in the next one to five years. The World Economic Forum's 2025 Future of Jobs Report predicts that 9 million jobs are expected to be displaced by AI in the next 5 years. 

We'll start this time with Hanan, as the tech expert and the AI optimist in the group. Do you think this is overly alarmist, or do you agree?

H.A: I would like to start not from the alarmist perspective but from the reality perspective. With AI – the change is coming and it's extremely fast. I think it's faster than anything we've seen before. I've been in the digital transformation business for so long, and things have been there, but it's been slow because of the friction of people's ability to change. But this time, I think there is a massive, fast change that will happen. So it's a bit difficult in the short term and hopefully great in the longer term.

The nature of entry-level jobs, the nature of organizations... organizations will flatten out. There will be delayering, there will be a change in the roles of management – of managers. We'll learn how to manage AI agents. It's a totally different kind of transformation that we're going to witness. Hopefully, the entry-level jobs and the young will be able to adapt and embrace. The key word is embrace, not resist, the change. And for the youth, it will be extremely fast.

H.M: Okay. Ahmed, most of these reports and the commentary that we get about the job apocalypse are more US-centric and US-based. I believe in Egypt we may be a little bit behind, and maybe this is one area where it's an advantage that we're behind because we're going to see how the rest of the world reacts. But how do you feel about the issue of jobs? Are we going to be out of work soon?

A.A: I would guess your 9 million number is low over the next five years globally. But I do think that the lag in Egypt is an advantage. In digitization, a lot of the companies we used to fund early on were "copy, paste, innovate" or "copy, paste, localize." And I think that the lag that Egypt will have in implementing AI, or has had even till today in implementing AI in the workplace, is an opportunity to adjust and to fine-tune the response and to localize the response.

So, I'm usually not very scared of change, and this one is scary and exciting at the same time. But there's definitely going to be substantial unrest and change, and young people are going to have to be very quick to adapt. I was just joking with somebody, my three-year-old grandson talks to ChatGPT and says, "Tell me about spiders," and has a conversation. I don't think [the idea that] AI is going to dumb people down unless they end up talking to it alone. That's why I think what both Dasha and Hanan mentioned —places where people get together and communicate on a regular basis and the fear is the silo-ization, people going into silos with their AI by themselves and kind of diluting their thought processes is the risk.

H.M: Dasha, I think most people are in agreement that the first jobs to go or the first jobs that will be impacted are entry-level jobs. So naturally, Gen Zers, recent college graduates, are maybe overly pessimistic about their futures. How do you feel about this as a business professional and as a father of a Gen Zer and a recent college graduate? How do you feel about this impact on entry-level work?

D.B: So, I've been trying to get up to speed as the real estate dinosaur – that's hopefully one of the industries that's the least, or let's say, the most delayed in being impacted. We need to sleep and work and eat and all of this stuff. But I kind of don't agree with that statement that only entry-level jobs are impacted. I think all jobs are. As you move up the ladder, you need people kind of feeding the machine from the start. So I think it really is potentially either a threat or an assistant to all jobs.

Whether some jobs are eliminated and they'll be replaced by things that we can't foresee, as the optimist, I kind of like to think that. I was listening to Geoffrey Hinton, the founder of AI, and he was saying that the jobs that are least threatened are the manual jobs, the plumbers and this type of thing. So we'll need skilled craftsmen, and we've got a lot of need for that. But I like to think that we will figure it out across the board. There are definitely threats. Is it apocalyptic? Hopefully not.

H.M: Yeah. I think entry-level work will eventually have to be reimagined because we still need junior positions and we need those junior people in companies in order to grow. Hanan, you work with a lot of young people. How do you feel about this?

H.A: I think "reimagined" and "redefined." Even the words "junior" and "senior" will be redefined. Because if the entry-level or the entrants are much faster to adapt and have much higher capabilities to deliver or to be able to adapt, they'll be the seniors more than the juniors. It's a total redefinition phase for everything. It's a redefinition phase for what do we call work? What do we call value creation? That's why I keep thinking the most powerful skill that we need is to be able to unlearn to learn. That's something that each one of us has to work on acquiring – this kind of skill.

H.M: As you said earlier, Hanan, there's maybe some short-term pain, as with any new technology, but then maybe long-term gain. I'm interested, Ahmed and Dasha, what are the new skills that you think will be necessary in order to be competitive in the job market 10 years from now? Let's start with Ahmed.

A.A: You have to learn to coexist with AI and take advantage of it. But I think that the bigger shift that universities and educational institutions need to focus on is really focusing on deep science—on semiconductors, biotech, physical products. And that the degrees in the soft sciences will be less valuable going forward. I actually don't agree with Dasha [on robots and low end labor] — I think robots are going to replace low-end labor, right. Skilled craftsmen, low-end labor... that may be one of the first jobs to go with robotics, which is in three to five years. Call center operators, AI today already is replaceable.

I think the re-shift into looking at people who can do what they call "physical AI," which is how the AI interfaces with the real world through robots, through science, through biotech, through semiconductors. As we're looking for investments, those are kind of the areas where we're shifting our focus. How do we dig into that and those fields to find opportunities?

D.B: But can I counter on that? Where the cost of labor in the West is extremely high and the plumber costs $100 an hour to come and fix my stuff, maybe there is an economic case to have it be robotics. But where the cost of labor is cheap, I can't see how the technology will be economically viable.

A.A: My $20,000 robot in five years will do the job of five people here who work three hours a day.

D.B: Let's see if he’s $20,000.

H.M: So, I'm interested, Ahmed, putting your VC investor hat on for a moment. Which businesses… What kinds of businesses are you looking to invest in now that will be sustainable 10 years from now with AI?

A.A: Exactly the ones that involve deep science, that involve biotech, that involve semiconductors, that involve the physical AI, as well as the ones that can interact or overlay on existing AI and how to leverage them to solve problems that aren't solved yet.

H.M: Dasha, the AI panel in the morning, I think one person mentioned the importance of critical thinking, things like creativity, taste, and so on. Do you see these as important skills? These are probably things that will not be replaced by AI — would you agree with that?

D.B: Yes. In our industry, for example, there is a large element of calculating the viability of projects through spreadsheets. And spreadsheets, in my personal view, as a person who’s let’s say not very good with spreadsheets, [spreadsheets] can produce whatever outcome you want them to produce. But it takes that interpretation, that human gut feeling sometimes, to make the call on something, whether it's viable or not and whether it's nice or not.

I think the creative side is actually also challenged. It's one of the things that's potentially challenged. But I do think that there is room for the human touch across pretty much most of the jobs. And, sitting on this panel, when I look at the Greek Campus and Kamelizer and District 5, creating the places for people to collaborate, to cluster, to create magic... I don't think that putting a bunch of AI machines is going to create that multiplier effect.

H.M: Right. That brings me on to the next topic, which is the workplace and geography and how AI is going to impact how we live. Hanan, as the pioneer of the co-working space in Egypt with Kamelizer and with Consoleya, how do you imagine the office will look like in 10 years?

H.A: I just want to echo the creativity and the importance of creativity in the era that we're living in, because AI is for speed and humans are for interpretations and for context. And the more this happens, the more the value is in art, creativity, interpretation, storytelling, context… For all of this, you need these workspaces to transform into ecosystems where different needs are met. There are a lot of, as I said, aesthetic shifts and societal shifts.

So you need to create spaces – there are a lot of terminologies. You need to create spaces that have neurodiversity, where you can have a quiet space, a collaborative space, and a meeting space. You need to create a space where there is a multigenerational space, a space that appeals to different generations. We used to have multigenerations in the workspace, but these upcoming generations demand the right to have the space with their formula. So how do you design a space that does not alienate the different generations that exist in these workspaces.

I totally imagine that the workspace formulation will have all these concepts. And I call it "design for choice." You need to have a space that is truly built with a lot of choices so that people can see what suits the type of work and the mood that they want to fit in, because everything needs to coexist in the same ecosystem. That's how I see it. And we have a lot of work transformation that is happening in the remote, “workation”, and different formulas. So "destination workspaces" are on the rise.

H.M: Dasha, as you develop projects in the future, this is obviously something that you will keep in mind, yeah? 

D.B: Very much. I was taken by an anecdote a colleague was telling me yesterday about this young Gen Zer that was deciding between two jobs. It was a multinational job, very coveted, high-end and high-paying, in an office tower on the Nile, or a local job in an environment where she felt she would be more suitable and she would meet more young people. And she turned the big multinational name down for the work environment. I think the young generation are not just motivated by climbing the corporate ladder or money. It is about the quality of life and the quality of people that they're going to interact with, and I think that's what informs our decisions now on creating future workspaces.

A.A: Can I throw something in on this? I think the hardest challenge in real estate is your ability to shift and change. Unlike a digital company, it's very difficult because you're working on a project that takes you three to seven years from start to delivery. And so building for flexibility, so that if you've messed up, you can adapt and change, is really the key. Not just building and trying to guess what everybody wants in three to seven years, but building so that you know the odds are 80% you got it wrong. And you better build space that you can change flexibly for whatever the market wants at that time.

H.M: I'd also like to take a look at city centers versus suburbs. This is very interesting because Hanan and Ahmed, and also Dasha—you don't have anything downtown, but there's Villa M in Zamalek, which is also a city center. How do you think this trend is going to evolve?

Downtowns were declared dead a few years back. Now we're seeing a global trend of the revival of downtowns, and downtown Cairo is a good example of that. How do you see this going forward, Hanan?

H.A: So, as we said, the culture is even more and more precious. The more the world goes digital, the more humans crave culture and these kinds of interactions. And city centers and downtown, this is the melting pot of all kinds of interests and disciplines. And our downtown Cairo is so precious. You can just feel it. It has a very precious vibe. And once you taste this kind of vibe, you crave for more, and people come with different kinds of experiences. And that's something from my perspective that will grow massively in the coming few years.

H.M: Ahmed?

A.A: Just briefly, downtown gives you more flexibility because out in the suburbs, whoever's just built something recently is already married to that and that business plan that they have. In downtown, you have lots of amazing remnant space that you can redesign and repurpose. Same as you mentioned, Villa M and the Greek Campus and Consoleya. These are remnant spaces that you can be creative with, versus somebody's business plan that they're implementing in a new development.

D.B: I agree. I'm excited, too. When you look at all major super-cities—and I'd like to think of Cairo as a super-city with history and generations. As much as we'd like to design flexible spaces, generally the business plans don't allow you to. You have to make a call and you have to go in a direction. But real estate is naturally flexible. We've seen downtowns degenerate and gentrify and change from commercial to residential. And I see downtown in Cairo going through that process and becoming more about tourism. It's the Nile. I see it becoming more for young couples or individuals rather than the suburbs, for families. It's got the transportation links, it's got the walkability. So, I think there's a very exciting future for downtown Cairo.

H.M: I think we have time for one closing question. So, again, fast forward to 2035. Where do each of you see yourselves and your specific businesses, given everything that we have discussed? Hanan?

H.A: I'm super excited about the transformation that is happening, that is blending different types of workspaces. So I see myself continuously architecting and designing new types of workspaces that are blending work, life, culture, music, entertainment, food in one space.

A.A: In 10 years, hopefully hanging out with my grandkids and playing golf, leaving all these problems to all of you guys. Seriously. But I think that I would like to see that the things that we're building in Egypt and in Cairo continue and that Cairo continues to boom. I'll tell you all a fact that last year was the first year Cairo was listed as one of the top 100 innovation centers in the world. And this year it advanced to, I think, number 80-something from number 100 or 99. So building cool places, creating innovation, supporting innovation, hopefully continues to be the future of Cairo and Egypt.

H.M: Dasha? 

D.B: Well, I was very encouraged by the two keynote speakers, the two ministers. I thought that they set a very, very exciting scene. Let’s say for the first time in many years, I'm kind of buying the Kool-Aid a little bit. It seems to be moving in the right direction. The fact that Mr. Alfi here, is relocating from the West Coast to Cairo suggests that there is something good happening here. So I think that the 10-year question is very hard because the rate of transformation that is being fueled by this AI revolution, or whatever the hell it is, is incredible. So, "have no idea" is the answer to your question. But I think that there are exciting times ahead.

H.M: Excellent. Thank you all so much.