to all right, you're up to date up next plan of a asks if converging unused officers into housing could help solve the real estate crisis. thank you. and for that i thought on the phone in the us for me and the team here in berlin. thanks for watching. take care of the words. people have to say that's why we listen to every weekend on d w. this shadows of just these pod costs and videos shed light on the donkey street. devastating colonial har is infected by germany across and he employed the schools, farms and destroyed lights. what is the legacy of this wide spread races,

depression, today? history? we need to talk about here, the stories, shadows of german colonialism. if you live in a city, there's a pretty good chance are living through a housing crisis. rent in the major cities are skyrocketing, and this is happening all around the world. at the same time of housing has grown scarce. some buildings stand empty, downtown fine for it looks like just about any other big city central business. public leaving high rises to hide and alarming facts. nearly 10 percent of a city is offices. are facing. other major cities around the globe have, do you can see rates that high or even higher. so why don't we just convert empty

offices into housing for people worldwide? well, many of us are back in the office. working from home is here to stay. for instance, 35 percent of us workers who can work from home and still do in plenty, only come into the office on occasion. but if they can, workspaces are into a new problem. long before the pandemic eating officers were already becoming less desirable. it hasn't been for about the last 10 years and the trend, the cold flight to quality stephen painter in architect that one of the world's biggest firms, focuses on adaptive reuse. people when, when you're in a lease is an older buildings are going to be less, it will be built because they offer that kind of amenities, the kind of locations people, and all these empty officers are in just a waste of space. they mean less rent for owners, lower tax revenue for cities and the decline of entire neighborhoods. we have

beautiful buildings. we have a wonderful plaza as we have sort of all of the physical assets. we just have vacant buildings. and so you don't see that vibrancy used to, you know, kind of look down these key car doors, and you would see just streams of people, you know, coming down the street. and you don't see that as much anymore. literally along the leaves of planner in san francisco, another studio dressing high, but you can see it's almost 95 percent of our tax revenue comes from business tax from downtown, about 80 percent of our g. d. p came from from downtown companies in 2021. it is our economic engine, and so it needs to strive so the city can thrive. roughly one 3rd of offices are vacant in san francisco. the 3rd most expensive housing market in the us. at the same time, the ongoing construction of new housing is causing a whole different host of problems. construction accounts for 13 percent of global energy related carbon emissions. more than 5 times that'd be of use in industry in

order to meet climate targets, but also other sustainability targets. we will need to actually stick with what's already built printer, the hot bed researches urban sustainability at stock homes, royal institute of technology. even if this new production of housing and buildings is done with very energy efficient and an optimized technologies, this won't be enough. we will also need to reduce the total amount of new production. and this is what brings us to frankfurt. i checked out an ongoing conversion project. an office tower built in the 90s will soon be reborn, us around $150.00 furnished apartments. then you mean all brush the developers regional european head is excited about adaptive reuse. the affordable care act on the side of down to see a i'm getting a little closet here so i'm staying housing wouldn't em all of our if it was on the

5th and puts in to see what's right in the sooner. but because i'm going to involve files that someone has a difficult time, but it doesn't only save on emissions. revamping and office building can be up to 30 percent cheaper and construction can be done in half the time. though that depends on the project. this one wasn't much cheaper than a new build, but speed played a big part of it upside fucked. us for me speaking stiffly, i can do this. we had out if needed me to not kicked off a meet. i know i'm good. no, he didn't, couldn't repurposing an old building to survey new function. it's called adaptive reuse and can extend to structures life. think of turning old factories into artist slots or warehouses into ubiquitous street food halls. there are plenty of empty offices. hundreds of people need housing. seems like a pretty simple solution, plus it's environmentally friendly. so why isn't this constantly happening? retrofitting an existing structure is a lot more complicated than planning everything from scratch. as developers have

found out, apartments and officers aren't always a $1.00 to $1.00 fit. it depends on when and where they were built. modern open plan officers weren't built for living in. first you must divide up large areas while ensuring rooms get enough sunlight. and you can just have one big bathroom for a whole floor. each room needs a ventilation seating and power to and for all you know, the old building is full of assessments. not every challenge is clear before renovation to start. and then so who knows or showing you about how show other demons questions are gibson, moving up like 20 bucks isn't going visual and an engine because we don't know how long time is gonna start going. you but i do some quick, tough guy. he's had a pc looks, stephen painter, the adaptive reuse specialist as even developed an algorithm to measure whether offices or good candidates to be reincarnated as housing clinics around the different aspects i saw on a key one of the things like the distance between the elevators and the windows,

the one, your one bedroom apartments have a nice bedroom or a window or a nice living space with a window and have it maybe the kitchen and the bathrooms back. that's great. a lot of office buildings actually have way too much space between the elevators and the glazing. to make that happen, this means to end up with shiny new apartments. many conversions essentially rebuild everything except the existing foundations. in facades turns out it's just slightly more complicated than just clearing out some cubicles and throwing up a bit of sheet rock, especially if you like a luxury, and that it is like bathrooms and every apartment in windows and every bedroom. these constraints make many offices just too much where to convert according to painters research. roughly 30 percent of offices are ideal candidates. and well, not every office building is right per conversion, adding up all of those that wouldn't be a good fit, would still make a massive difference. if you look at the us market, where we're doing

a lot of this work is about a 100000000 square feet. of office space and if you come by just the vacancy on about 70 percent of that you can create between 6 and 7000000 new homes. but just turning offices into apartments isn't going to be enough. neighborhoods that are just office box can be a bit inhospitable calling with finance bro, his by day or thing. it that goes to pounds outside of business hours, insurance people live, not just work. there could change that as we saw for ourselves. this neighborhood of frankfurt, meta god, was developed as a sprawling set of offices in the sixties and seventies. given the wild be creative nickname of the people stopped for office city, but by the mid to thousands, nearly one and 3 of the officers were sitting empty, sped into the subdivision of mc 14 and was on the 2nd. let me talk to kindergarten . grant defends, you outlined the impartial club i go for this is as a dish to us and found somebody if we had lots team development live in 2006,

the city began converting the empty office towers into housing, creating true mixed use development. now it's filled with places to live shop and go to some will instead of just places to work. frankfurt result in the area in turn, parking lots and the green spaces in kindergarten. and it brought in developers to build apartments and shots. when they're done, they'll be 6000 apartments here. there's other stuff. the lead me is, but mega shifted the orange, dunning st. monday. and i'm tex postables and coughing come. cindy bill was hoping to talk to you from the 1st. if a meetings, especially, we took a tour of one of the converted office buildings, a 20 story tower turned into 150 apartments in 2020. its former lights made for some corks. every room has sprinklers and architects built around loads bearing beams. but the most high ceilings and great deals to as you can see, many of these conversions end up as relatively upscale housing that might take a bit of pressure off the housing market. but it's not going to bring relief to the

massive. if we want this to be more than just some kind of luxury news, you don't need anything crazy. just a bit of political wealth. the canadian city of calgary, which started working with painter to revitalize its downtown in 2021 is a case in point count. we had about 38 percent, but you can see in their office market and i was assigned one of the worst in the well and a very quickly actually for a program together which gives you 75000 square foot to compare the building and move forward with the red tape out of the way to make these projects move more quickly and the 1st 5 projects and now under construction, represents about $750.00 new homes. and they have 10 more approved patriots. as much of this housing will be affordable and built with families in mind, thanks to the financial incentives provided by the city. adopted for use often has even more red tape the new builds that will have to change if we're going to use this potential to curve emissions. so if you take turns around as an example,

there's a role in the downtown you cannot renting office space is protected as employment months that was created in the seventy's and they just never got things is because it was not going to change it on out as a desperate need to change its, its kind of holding up, which part is happening. such arbitrary regulations are quite common and approval for conversions often takes as long as it would for a new build, even though the structure is already in place. ideally it'd be the other way around, it's both legislative and sort of from a governance perspective. busy we need to think of how a, how to actually make it difficult to, for example, tear down a building and build a new building through. so knowing and through harder legislation. but also through soft legislation can taxation and financial incentives frankly, leading the way in germany converting offices for nearly 10000 houses in the last

decade. and according to recent studies, there's room for plenty more in cities all over the map. frankfurt did it with careful city planning, like in need of that plus the more we learned implementing such projects, the greater the savings since that are 1st office conversion projects i've done well, then you mean all dress thinks this firm will focus more on adaptive 3 years many developers have shown interest in these projects in cities like san francisco are supporting office conversions. i don't think that we're now even any way of thinking that we're gonna build, you know, hundreds of thousands of units downtown. but i think it's, you know, part of the solution and is an amazing opportunity to take advantage of these existing assets be kind of support offered, may determine the type of housing we get, flipping offices into housing is clearly no quick fix and it's not going to solve the global housing crisis overnight, footprint per in calgary,

do show it to make cities vastly more livable and it can drastically reduce the environmental impact of relying solely on new belt. let us know in the comments if your city has started converting officers to housing, don't forget to subscribe. we've got new videos for you every friday. the answers that come fix zone with the best in here at the munich security conference i sent to you in security and conflict, providing the politicians, the next 5, the world reached a dangerous inflection point. my guess is we have the 2nd live experience of the highest levels in the us 90 below 0,

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moses video and audio production by d w. i hope video will tune in here at the munich security conference has plenty of security and conflict to worry the politicians the next. but so how's the world reach that dangerous inflection point? my guess is we have becky's of experience with the highest political levels in the us. she's california congress, woman and former speaker of the house of representatives, nancy pelosi, in gaza. the us as one that israel has killed 5 to many palestinians, but is jerusalem listening. how will funding for ukraine clear the kind of block in the us congress and this presence of 5 really too old to run for a 2nd to.