| Since the pandemic began, I have been pushing the limits of my imagination to try to picture what cities will look and feel like in the coming years. In San Francisco, these are pressing questions: our once-bustling Financial District is a ghost town, but even in outer neighborhoods, the number of vacant storefronts is unsettling. What’s going to happen to those semi-vacant office towers, some of which are still under construction? Scores of restaurants have closed in recent months; who will take over those spaces? Here’s a real puzzler: can you transform a skyscraper into affordable housing? Seeking answers, Managing Editor Eric Eldon interviewed ten VCs who are active in proptech and found that most were generally “optimistic.” Several expressed uncertainty about the future of the office, but most were bullish about remote work, the rebirth of physical retail and the emergence of “third spaces” that will fill the gap between work and home. In a companion piece on TechCrunch, he explores these broader shifts, concluding, “you can start to see a world emerging that sounds a lot more like the fantasies of a New Urbanist than the world before the pandemic.” Here’s who Eric interviewed: - Clelia Warburg Peters, venture partner, Bain Capital Ventures
- Christopher Yip, partner and managing director, RET Ventures
- Zach Aarons, co-founder and general partner, MetaProp
- Casey Berman, general partner, Camber Creek
- Vik Chawla, partner, Fifth Wall
- Adam Demuyakor, co-founder and managing partner, Wilshire Lane Partners
- Robin Godenrath and Julian Roeoes, partners, Picus Capital
- Stonly Baptiste, founding partner, and Shaun Abrahamson, managing partner, Urban Us
- Andrew Ackerman, managing director, Dreamit
Thanks very much for reading Extra Crunch. Have a great weekend! Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
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