12th February 2016 – Retirement Reflections
Retirement Reflections
North America, Europe and Japan all face ageing populations and shrinking pension pots. To me this sounds like a unique business opportunity for Africa to use its competitive advantages of sun, low cost carers and weak exchange rates to create a booming new service industry. Retirees would be able to play golf and bridge, lounge on the beach and enjoy the local cuisine. Every couple of days they could Skype with their family members left behind. When the winter gales strike, they could flee north for a month or so of sponging off relatives and old friends. Life would be blissful. Already Somerset West, just outside Cape Town, is reputed to have the largest German speaking population of any city outside Germany and Austria so why not elsewhere in Africa?
Speaking of retirement homes, of course, reminds me that my dear wife is putting renewed pressure on me to add my name to one or more of their waiting lists now that I have retired from MBendi. In the past I have managed to obfuscate but recently I have read two books that give substance to my refusal.
In my last MBendi newsletter, I remarked that in his book Sapiens, Yuval Harari claims that Homo Sapiens made their worst, irreversible mistake when they changed from hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists. Evidently early man lived in bands fifty to a hundred strong comprising everyone from babies to greybeards who all knew each other intimately. Gathering and hunting occupied a couple of hours a day and then they could just sit in the sun and chill with their mates, as my kids would say. I have visions of them sitting round a fire slurping fermented berries and laughing uproariously at the thought that one day one of their descendents could spend his whole adult life in a suit travelling to and from a cell where he languished miserably all day – what could be more preposterous!
With more than half of mankind now housed in cities and millions more pouring in each week, Edward Glaeser’s Triumph of the City highlights some of the issues affecting urbanisation. Admittedly it has a strong American bias with Rio and Bangalore getting passing reference and Europe a bit more, but it is instructive. Detroit failed because the blue collar workers retrenched by the automobile industry didn’t have the skills to reinvent themselves as entrepreneurs. While Houston’s leafy suburbs might seem green, the energy required for heating, cooling and cars far outstrips that of an apartment in a city highrise. In the San Francisco Bay area, a combination of building restrictions and highly paid Silicon Valley employees is putting housing out of the price range of too many, specially the low-paid retail and service staff who are pushed to the fringes. An artist’s impression in the New York Times recently showed several new residential skyscrapers underway; Glaeser attributes that city’s success to entrepreneurial ideas spawned in the bustling streets and coffee shops and to the ongoing availability of affordable, energy-efficient housing making best use of limited land area.
Glaeser recommends that cities with limited land and a fast growing migrant population should build upwards rather low rise outwards. Cape Town, for instance, has a huge opportunity to build multipurpose highrise buildings to make best use of the barren blight of the District Six area, near the city centre, razed by the Apartheid government. I fear they plan instead to try to replicate what was there before instead of maximising housing close to jobs.
With these examples in mind, I turned my eyes to the housing examples around me – as you might also like to do as you plan your ideal living conditions. My son and his family live in a rural community of about sixty healthcare and educational professions. Young families there live in two-bedroomed homes just a couple of minutes walk from work. Children wander freely and safely from house to house. While they are a real community, where I live there is none. Although plots are being subdivided, bringing people physically closer, most houses have high walls from which their occupants emerge in sleek automobiles from time to time. At the other end of the scale, on the road from the airport, the city of Cape Town is no longer building one or two room shoe box houses to replace the migrant shacks; they are building two storey terrace rows. With land so scarce they do need to go higher.
So, as I (and probably you too) think about old age, I would, as our ancestors did, like to live in a vibrant community of old and young people and not be caged away from society with fellow dodderers. My dwelling must be comfortable and energy efficient with easy access to amenities and entertainment. In fact, in the middle of winter I can see myself huddling in a nearby coffee shop with my retired soulmates from all around the world, counting our blessings that we are not out hunting and gathering in the rain. Only, like the well-off northern hemisphere retirees, our ancestors probably had the good sense to migrate to warmer climes before the gales came roaring in.
Useful Links
For some more thoughts on where urban living is headed, you could read this article from the Guardian on Uruguay’s Punte del Este.
North America, Europe and Japan all face ageing populations and shrinking pension pots. To me this sounds like a unique business opportunity for Africa to use its competitive advantages of sun, low cost carers and weak exchange rates to create a booming new service industry. Retirees would be able to play golf and bridge, lounge on the beach and enjoy the local cuisine. Every couple of days they could Skype with their family members left behind. When the winter gales strike, they could flee north for a month or so of sponging off relatives and old friends. Life would be blissful. Already Somerset West, just outside Cape Town, is reputed to have the largest German speaking population of any city outside Germany and Austria so why not elsewhere in Africa?
Speaking of retirement homes, of course, reminds me that my dear wife is putting renewed pressure on me to add my name to one or more of their waiting lists now that I have retired from MBendi. In the past I have managed to obfuscate but recently I have read two books that give substance to my refusal.
In my last MBendi newsletter, I remarked that in his book Sapiens, Yuval Harari claims that Homo Sapiens made their worst, irreversible mistake when they changed from hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists. Evidently early man lived in bands fifty to a hundred strong comprising everyone from babies to greybeards who all knew each other intimately. Gathering and hunting occupied a couple of hours a day and then they could just sit in the sun and chill with their mates, as my kids would say. I have visions of them sitting round a fire slurping fermented berries and laughing uproariously at the thought that one day one of their descendents could spend his whole adult life in a suit travelling to and from a cell where he languished miserably all day – what could be more preposterous!
With more than half of mankind now housed in cities and millions more pouring in each week, Edward Glaeser’s Triumph of the City highlights some of the issues affecting urbanisation. Admittedly it has a strong American bias with Rio and Bangalore getting passing reference and Europe a bit more, but it is instructive. Detroit failed because the blue collar workers retrenched by the automobile industry didn’t have the skills to reinvent themselves as entrepreneurs. While Houston’s leafy suburbs might seem green, the energy required for heating, cooling and cars far outstrips that of an apartment in a city highrise. In the San Francisco Bay area, a combination of building restrictions and highly paid Silicon Valley employees is putting housing out of the price range of too many, specially the low-paid retail and service staff who are pushed to the fringes. An artist’s impression in the New York Times recently showed several new residential skyscrapers underway; Glaeser attributes that city’s success to entrepreneurial ideas spawned in the bustling streets and coffee shops and to the ongoing availability of affordable, energy-efficient housing making best use of limited land area.
Glaeser recommends that cities with limited land and a fast growing migrant population should build upwards rather low rise outwards. Cape Town, for instance, has a huge opportunity to build multipurpose highrise buildings to make best use of the barren blight of the District Six area, near the city centre, razed by the Apartheid government. I fear they plan instead to try to replicate what was there before instead of maximising housing close to jobs.
With these examples in mind, I turned my eyes to the housing examples around me – as you might also like to do as you plan your ideal living conditions. My son and his family live in a rural community of about sixty healthcare and educational professions. Young families there live in two-bedroomed homes just a couple of minutes walk from work. Children wander freely and safely from house to house. While they are a real community, where I live there is none. Although plots are being subdivided, bringing people physically closer, most houses have high walls from which their occupants emerge in sleek automobiles from time to time. At the other end of the scale, on the road from the airport, the city of Cape Town is no longer building one or two room shoe box houses to replace the migrant shacks; they are building two storey terrace rows. With land so scarce they do need to go higher.
So, as I (and probably you too) think about old age, I would, as our ancestors did, like to live in a vibrant community of old and young people and not be caged away from society with fellow dodderers. My dwelling must be comfortable and energy efficient with easy access to amenities and entertainment. In fact, in the middle of winter I can see myself huddling in a nearby coffee shop with my retired soulmates from all around the world, counting our blessings that we are not out hunting and gathering in the rain. Only, like the well-off northern hemisphere retirees, our ancestors probably had the good sense to migrate to warmer climes before the gales came roaring in.
Useful Links
For some more thoughts on where urban living is headed, you could read this article from the Guardian on Uruguay’s Punte del Este.
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