Changing public outcry into community buy-In w/ Farhaan Ladhani

[music and construction site sound effects]

Jen Hancock: 

When it comes to construction projects within communities, everyone has an opinion.

[music]

Jen Hancock: 

“NIMBY,” it stands for “not in my backyard.” It’s an acronym that’s used to describe neighbourhood residents who think that new developments are good, as long as they don’t come anywhere near where they live.

You can find NIMBYs in the news in just about every major city around the world. They’re often cast as the villains in stories about affordable housing, expanded public transit, or divisive utilities like nuclear power plants.

[music]

Jen Hancock: 

NIMBYs are portrayed as cantankerous and unreasonable, public enemy number one—digging in their heels to block projects with the potential to improve the quality of life for hundreds of other people.

[music]

Jen Hancock: 

But what exactly is ruffling their feathers? Most are offended by things that are either noxious or obnoxious. Noxious meaning anything that could be perceived as noisy, smelly, or risky. Think garbage dumps, airports, highways, shopping centres, prisons, wind turbines.

[announcement sound effect]

Jen Hancock: 

And obnoxious, well, that could be just about anything, depending on what bugs you. Gnarly traffic flow, blocked sightlines, altered horizons, building shadows, construction noise; basically, inconvenience.

The social and economic impacts of NIMBYism can be huge. Cities are living, breathing, dynamic organisms that are always changing. So, when a small group of individuals would rather keep things the way they’ve always been, friction is inevitable.

And one company is figuring out how to turn NIMBYs into YIMBYs. In other words, they’re flipping those absolutely NOTs into resounding YESes.

This is Building Good. I’m Jen Hancock.

[music]

Farhaan Ladhani:

My name is Farhaan Ladhani. I’m the CEO of Goodbit. We’re a company that believes that we can have better conversations, even when they’re really difficult, and even when they take place in challenging environments.

[music]

Jen Hancock: 

Farhaan is the CEO of Digital Public Square, and a senior fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs. After 20 years of developing digital tools designed to help people communicate better, he turned his problem-solving eye towards the built environment and created Goodbit.

[music]

Farhaan Ladhani:

So, Goodbit is a learning and engagement platform. It takes this idea, that we can break down all sorts of complex subjects into these little chunks of information that can help people create the conditions for better conversations, and that if we could make it playful and fun, we can make it so that people not only are willing to participate but they’re actually enjoying the act of participation.

Jen Hancock: 

If you’ve ever attended a public consultation, you’ll know that the words “playful” and “fun” don’t always come to mind.

[sounds of indistinct crowd voices and a gavel pounding]

Farhaan Ladhani:

And so we created a gamified learning platform. And in this playful dynamic, what you’re doing is you’re exposing yourself to a way of thinking about those topics that you may not have considered.

[music]

Jen Hancock: 

Essentially, they’re helping people see eye-to-eye instead of taking an eye-for-an-eye.

[music]

Farhaan Ladhani:

All throughout the lifecycle of a project, it’s about a belief in whether or not we want communities participating in the built environment, but it’s also a way of mitigating the risk of the kinds of friction that inevitably occur. Things are always going to go wrong. Things are always going to be delayed. And in the face of those problems, either the community is with you or they’re not.

And every time the community is with you, all of a sudden the rate of problem-solving, and then remediation, improves.

Jen Hancock: 

So how does Goodbit come in?

Farhaan Ladhani:

What it does is, it encourages and facilitates dialogue by taking sometimes difficult, sometimes challenging content or topics that foster lots of conflict, breaks it down in a way that makes you feel like you’re playing with that information, in ways that open you up to considering whether or not something new you may have thought was absolutely true might actually be false, and something that you thought may actually have been false might actually be true.

And in this playful dynamic, what you’re doing is you’re exposing yourself to a way of thinking about those topics, that you may not have considered. How do arrive at a decision if you just don’t really quite understand the information?

And we live in a society today where just the volume of information that people are expected to consume, and then process, and then actually assess, and then arrive at a decision is absolutely enormous.

If you just take the basic statistic: for U.S. adults, the time that they spent on the screen has increased from about four-and-a-half hours a day in 2010, to almost doubling ten years later. Just think about that: eight hours a day. That’s a third of your whole waking time, where you’re consuming massive quantities of information. And then we’re expecting people to just take it in, digest it, and then arrive at a conclusion when they have all of this background noise.

And what we’ve tried to do, in our platform, was to break down some of those pieces of information where people might have misconceptions because they’re consuming this massive firehose of content.

And so they play this game, and they learn a little bit about what might be a misconception that they have. They have an opportunity to tell us what they actually think. And then they’re confronted with what we would consider to be more reliable information.

And in the process of this six- to ten-minute game, they’re encountering all sorts of stuff that some of which confirms what they believed to be true, some of which says, “Actually, what I thought was true really isn’t.” And in that process, it opens them up to considering information that might actually affect the choices that they make.

And what we learned is that, in the context of people engaging on their mobile phone on this game—looks like a game, feels like a game—is that it allows us to actually engage people, in a meaningful way, around the fears and concerns that they have, and in doing so encourage them to take in the kinds of more reliable information that help them arrive at a better decision.

And concretely, that means that they can have better conversations with their doctors, with their family members, with their communities.

Jen Hancock: 

On the note of engagement, taking that into design and construction. It’s a big challenging part of early stages of construction. It can be, not in all jobs but many.

Farhaan Ladhani:

Yeah.

Jen Hancock: 

Can you explain what’s so challenging about engaging a community around a construction project?

Farhaan Ladhani:

Yeah. So our experience, at the level of neighbourhoods, one of the biggest things we learned undertaking an exercise where we engaged thousands of people in a community about the built environment—and so the buildings that are going to be built there or—or that people would like to build there, and about the parks, and the recreation activities, and the transportation, all of the things that make up the built environment in our communities—one of the first things we learned was that not everyone’s in the conversation. And that, in fact, when you have these dialogues, when you’re trying to encourage those inputs into the decision-making process, what we learned was that there’s a lot of people that are left out.

They’re not left out on purpose. Oftentimes there’s a lot of goodwill at the level of communities to include as many voices as they can find. But the very structure of those conversations—a meeting at nine o’clock at night or seven o’clock at night on a Tuesday evening—by design actually leaves a bunch of people out. So that was our first lesson learned, which was: who’s in, who’s out?

And if you really want to get a broad understanding of a community and the impacts that construction might have, you’ve got to figure out how to include the largest number of people, because their considerations are going to be different, one to the next.

If you’re a renter living in the community, that’s going to be different from someone who has a house there. If you’re transiting in and out of the community but you live somewhere else, their considerations are going to be different. If you’ve been living there for 25 years and want to bring your kids up there, their considerations are going to be different too. And if you really want to have a good understanding of the impact of that building on the community, you’ve got to figure out how to get as many voices to the table. So that’s number one: do you have all the people in the room?

Number two: are you actually helping them arrive at a better understanding of what the benefits and the genuine costs are of having this construction take place? And in a much more honest way, can you actually consider that those tradeoffs are going to be really good for some people but not so good for others, and then build around the ones that are not going to be so good for them, to figure out how to reduce the harmful effects? And if you can do that, well then, man, you’ve got all sorts of ownership by the community on this project. And as a consequence, not only are they going to support it, they’re going to populate it, they’re going to tell people about it, and they’re going to encourage more of it.

And so I would say, if you could just start with just those two things, I think you can massively improve the likelihood of success and actually create a space for learning—learning about what those residents need, learning about what matters to that community—and in doing so, affect the planning for the next thing you want to build.

Jen Hancock: 

Right. And then, what’s your thought on when that engagement needs to start, then?

Farhaan Ladhani:

Oh my god, as early as possible. As early as possible. Like as far away from the moment when there is a shovel in the ground as possible. Because by the inclusion of that community right from the get-go…. I know it sounds hard and it’s going to cause a lot of friction, and you have 50,000 things to worry about, which is: “What’s my timing going to be like with the basis of the interest rate?” and “How’s it going to affect the speed of building?” and “What’s the impact going to be on my bottom line?” I get it.

Jen Hancock: 

All the things, yep.

Farhaan Ladhani:

All the things. I’m not suggesting that those aren’t important; they’re absolutely critical. But, man, if you could reduce the amount of friction at the front end, that has a massive impact.

Jen Hancock: 

Do you see it continue through the life of the project? It’s not just at the beginning, I assume.

Farhaan Ladhani:

Yep, yeah, it’s the full lifecycle.

And it sounds like it’s really long and it sounds really hard, but actually what I would say is, it’s not that hard anymore. It takes a decision to say, “That’s what we’re going to do.” Because if you believe that that buy-in in necessary, and you believe that that participation produces better effects, then we’re talking about fragments of time over the full duration of a construction. And I would argue, actually, that it’s a massive risk-mitigation tool. Because your observation on the challenges you’re about to have—that haven’t happened yet, that you’re about to have—your ability to see those challenges coming, your ability to see that risk in front of you, your ability to understand what is driving that particular risk and then be able to remediate it well before it occurs, is only possible if you can actually see it.

And I would say that those fragments of time, all throughout the lifecycle of a project, are actually a risk-mitigation tool. So yes, it’s about a belief in whether or not you want communities participating in the built environment, but it’s also a way of mitigating the risk of the kinds of friction that inevitably occur. Things are always going to go wrong. Things are always going to be delayed. There’s always going to be some effects: that the traffic is brutal because reasons; there’s going to be the type of construction is no longer able to happen because supply chain something-something.

All of those are going to be problems that you face. And in the face of those problems, either the community is with you or they’re not. And every time the community is with you, all of a sudden the rate of problem-solving, and then remediation, improves.

I think it’s just a choice as to whether you want to mitigate those risks by having the visibility or deal with the consequences. And I think that that tradeoff, oftentimes, feels like, “I’ll just deal with the consequences because it feels cheaper, faster, easier.” I think that the expectations of how long it takes are real. I actually think it’s much easier, it’s much simpler, it’s much faster, and you get immediate seen results. So I would argue that the idea that, “Oh, man, this is going to be a massive time sink,” is just actually not leveraging the contemporary tools that exist today to be able to do this fast and build on best practice.

Jen Hancock: 

There’s that saying that says, “You’ve got to make time to save time.” This is one of those examples where, like, you have to make space for this. but the benefit is huge.

Farhaan Ladhani:

Right away. I think the benefit is immediate. It is absolutely long-term, without question, unequivocally long-term, but it’s also immediate. If you integrate it from the get-go, right at the early part of the planning process, in fragments of minutes you have communities that are engaged. And you have communities that can be engaged all throughout. And then they’re the same ones that are going to be able to program those spaces after it’s already built and then create a life around that particular set that might exist now.

And I think that builds on the question of community. I think the community is actually those people who are not just leveraging the facility or using the facility, it’s all the people that are connected to it.

So take a school. It is absolutely the students that go there. It’s the teachers that go there. They may not live in the neighbourhood. My kids go to a school where a majority of teachers, I’m not sure, actually live right within the catchment area. I think it’s parents that commute in and out of that facility. It’s the people that run the programs in and out of that facility. It’s the people that are connected to that building, as a physical structure, that are animating the life around that structure.

There are going to be clusters of people who are just more engaged, because it has much more direct impact on their life. And so when you’re solving for the kinds of problems that emerge, you can make strategic choices. “Do I want to improve the quality of life of everyone at the same time?” We’re going to make some decisions. “Do I want to improve the quality of life of people that are most deeply connected?” Well, I can make of those decisions.

And if you are actually fostering participation throughout the whole thing, you have visibility on what that most tightly woven part of the community is, and what that outside circle looks like. So if you draw a set of circles in your mind, the one that’s most tightly connected, you can make decisions for them, and then there are going to be consequences. And you can make decisions for the broader community, and there are going to be consequences. But you could actually see those things if you are fostering engagement throughout.

Jen Hancock: 

And how do you actually reach those people?

Farhaan Ladhani:

Oh, so many ways. So, today, I mean, if you’re going to run a community consultation, how do you do it?

Jen Hancock: 

There might be Facebook pages that go get put out. There might be physical signs, posters in the community. There might be emails going out to community leagues. Things like that.

Farhaan Ladhani:

Yeah. Same thing. Take all available digital channels. And then take the network of the people that are right there that are going to be the most deeply affected. Take the residents’ associations, and the business improvement areas, and the local government officials who are going to be the recipients of all the complaints. Take all of those clusters, all of those people that are critical nodes in the community, and create the conditions for them to participate, in one place, online. That allows you to have high distribution potential. It allows for the broadest array of voices. And it creates the conditions for the diversity of people that’ll give you the widest set of understanding possible. And then foster that understanding more deeply by connecting face-to-face. That doesn’t mean that you do this in substitution of the face-to-face engagement. Instead it says, “We’re going to do face-to-face engagement in addition to getting that broad opinion.” And in that room bring those voices too.

Jen Hancock: 

How do you know when you’re doing the most effective community engagement? How do you know you’re not listening to just the loudest voices? And how do you know you’ve kind of capturing all that?

Farhaan Ladhani:

So: ask. That would be my opinion, which is: ask.

So I’ll take you back to the example that I said earlier, which was we engaged thousands of residents in the community here in Toronto around the conversation around the priorities that they have for that community in the face of a series of developments that were expected to place over the course of the next ten years.

And what we found was that when we purpose-designed an approach to foster that engagement, that we designed it in a way that it would be accessible to the broadest array of the community—meaning people that were living there, that were renting there, who had businesses there, whose kids went to school there—and then we asked them to tell us a little bit about themselves in a way that was privacy-preserving—you didn’t have to tell us your name, didn’t have to give us your address, you weren’t required to give us your social insurance number, instead what we said was we were going to preserve the privacy of each individual and then will you tell us something about yourself—what we learned was that nearly six in ten people belong to a group or community that was typically underserved, in one form or another.

And so, by the act of asking, and the act of designing for that broad constituency, what we learned was that people would be willing to tell us a little bit more about themselves that helped understand whether or not we were actually reflecting the broadest array of opinions and whether or not that broad array of opinions tracked against the census data that we had about the life of the community. And by making that actually part of the process, that discipline of saying, “Well, we have an understanding of what we think the community makeup looks like. Who are we hearing from? And how well does it relate to our established understanding of the community?” that all of a sudden told us whether or not we’re on the mark or off the mark.

Jen Hancock: 

Right. Interesting.

And then, just while we’re still talking about community, there’s another community involved in construction; and that’s the workers on the job site. Why is it important to curate a community on a job site?

Farhaan Ladhani:

There are all sorts of benefits. Right? Benefits of creating a bit of an ecosystem where there can be support. People aren’t feeling well, like any other workplace they can cover off for one another. A community where they feel like they are part-and-parcel of a group of people doing a really hard thing together—which has massive improvements on the likelihood of success. The ways in which those people then can identify when they’ve got specific challenges, because they built some trust and that trust allows them to have the safety of telling people how they actually feel, whether they’re sick. We’re supporting a project that’s focused on opioid use, particularly in industries that have high degrees of physical labour. One of the biggest things that we’re dealing with is stigma, which is telling someone, “Actually I’m not sure if this okay.” And so breaking down that stigma by creating some relationships that allow people to feel like they can actually trust somebody by talking to them. All of those are incredible reasons to foster community by and amongst those that are working on a job site.

Sometimes that happens naturally, because you have a lot of friends and colleagues that you interact with on a regular basis. Oftentimes, in the world in which we work today—where you’re doing lots of different jobs, I suspect, in lots of different localities, and where your social bonds are no longer driven by your participation in a club, or in a church, or in a particular group—that the society we live in now, today, those institutions that used to be the places where a lot of those bonds were established and developed, there’s some tension on those. And those are not longer places that we’re seeing as highly populated. And so, as a result, how you create those bonds purposefully is actually something, I think, that every employer and everyone working on project sites, like the ones that you all entertain, need to think about whether or not they need to take it upon themselves to foster that community. For exactly the reasons of the kinds of ways that people are working, and the kinds of ways that people are interacting with one another—that they have changed, and now you might need to create purposeful collisions.

Jen Hancock: 

You have a different engagement, I assume, for both kinds of community.

Farhaan Ladhani:

Yeah, very much so. I think helping those that are actually doing the work of building a particular structure, I think there are some remarkable ways to bring them closer to the people who are going to benefit from that. And I actually think by creating purposeful opportunities for engagement between those two different communities could lead to all sorts of really positive effects. I think it helps everyone when they understand the purpose of what they’re trying to accomplish—whether it’s building a building, building a piece of software, or deciding to become a medical professional, or anything in between. Creating opportunities for each of those communities to learn a little bit more about one another can drive all sorts of empathy, which allows people to make slightly different decisions.

It allows people to say, “I think I understand why it’s so hard for people to build this building. Maybe I shouldn’t just be as frustrated about the fact that it’s taking so long.” Because you can actually empathize with that challenge. Everyone can empathize with other human beings. How do you actually create that? Because if you can create that empathy between those groups, man, that has a massive impact on friction.

[music]

Geoff Capelle:

Bird Construction’s century-long impact has been etched into the fabric of Canadian communities that we’ve help build from coast-to-coast-to-coast.

From the social infrastructure that enriches our communities, the transportation and communications infrastructure that connects us, and the power, energy, and resources that move us, Bird builds with a collaborative culture and solution-focused mindset to build a better tomorrow.

To join our team or learn more, visit bird.ca.

Jen Hancock:

I just want to go back to one thing you did touch on earlier, around the mental health crisis and some of the opioid crisis. And there is higher rates of that in construction. Can you talk to me just a little bit about what you found there and addressing that?

Farhaan Ladhani:

So, some of the early research that we have seen is that, number one, the rates of consumption are perhaps higher than we might have otherwise observed.

Number two, there’s pretty legitimate reasons that people take opioids for pain. And there is a lot of stigma associated with the use of opioids, particularly, in the way it’s been characterized.

And so as a consequence, there is a real balancing act between helping people both alleviate pain, not feel shameful for alleviating pain, and being able to identify when it’s actually creating a real challenge. And it’s not easy to figure out exactly where that line is by yourself. And if you don’t want to somebody about it, it turns out it becomes exceptionally difficult.

And so the way that we’ve been thinking about this is: how do we help people encourage help-seeking behaviour by helping them come to terms on their own about whether or not they need it? How do we help people around those individuals—their broader community, their friends, their family, and others—recognize when someone might need help, because they might not just tell you?

And actually, it’s the same kind of thing that we just talked about between the groups of people that are building buildings and those that are going to occupy those spaces. And you create purposeful collisions between these two parts of the community: those that might need to better understand if they need to seek to help; and those that might need to better understand how to recognize when someone needs to seek to help. And doing that in a way that has both being empathetic to the real problem that they’re facing. That it's not because someone decides that they simply want to get high, but rather it’s because they—they actually need some help.

And if you can create that moment of just a bit of understanding, well then all of a sudden the kinds of ways that you might treat it will change.

Jen Hancock:

I’m just curious about when you design the engagement. I assume you work with leadership teams that either know the project, what’s going on in the community, and/or know their construction site and what they may be facing.

Farhaan Ladhani:

Yeah.

Jen Hancock:

Do you then design the engagement based on that information? And then does the information you get back start to feed and change the way that you might shift that engagement? I assume you talk to the leadership team, or whoever you’ve been discussing that in the first place with. What does that look like?

Farhaan Ladhani:

Yeah. So, I mean, this is true for everything. Engaging people who are directly impacted, or have been directly impacted, at the centre of the design process is absolutely critical, right from the get-go.

Which means that you’re actually talking to lots of people who, in the context of vaccines, might be hesitant to taking them; and those that might be totally bought-in to taking them; and health professionals who are talking to people that might be hesitant or otherwise engage them; and nurses and health professionals that are at the site of delivery. We’re actually trying to understand the problems that each of them are trying to solve and then digesting those problems in a way that allows you to address them in a thoughtful and considered way.

So you’re absolutely dealing with leadership. You’re also dealing with people who are directly affected. Because observations are going to be very different. Where you sit is where you stand, I think the story is. And if your observation is from one particular perspective, you’re going to see only that which is in front of you. Which is why that act of encouraging inputs from a wide array of stakeholders.

In the context of construction, that could be site managers. It could be at leadership. It could be people affected directly. It could be from community leaders. It could be from civil society organizations. It could be from health professionals. All of those inputs are critical because their observation of the problem is going to be different on the basis of where they stand. But you have to ultimately incorporate all of that into the design of addressing how you’re going to deal with the problem. Because if you don’t, you’re going to otherwise alienate people—number one, that’s the worst case—you’re also not solving the problem.

Jen Hancock:

Right.

So, on the podcast, we kind of often think about the architectural, engineering, construction space of building better. You’re working with engineers of a different kind than what I tend to work with on a day-to-day basis.

Farhaan Ladhani:

Yeah.

Jen Hancock:

Software engineers, product designers. Talk to me about your thoughts on responsibilities of software engineers and developers, in building a better world.

Farhaan Ladhani:

Yeah. So I think that responsibility is enormous. I think that we’re seeing around us the actual enormity of that responsibility. I’m encouraged by the kinds of conversations that we’re having around us. I’ll make it really straightforward. I think that over the course of the last several decades, we’ve seen a real push for rapid, scalable growth. That’s good. It allows it us to push boundaries. It allows us to force people into thinking about how to scale solutions to really hard problems.

I think we’ve also learned the rate of technology and how fast it’s moving is leaving people more vulnerable. And actually, those that are most vulnerable typically take the disproportionate share of the negative effects. Because they’re already in a compromised place, and as a consequence that change leaves them even more compromised. And I think that’s been true for the vast majority of technological innovation.

I think what we’ve learned over the course of the last couple of decades is that we could do something about it. That we don’t have to simply be subject to the impacts on the most vulnerable people, and that, in fact, we can build in some of the mitigation to reduce those harmful effects, if you think about it first.

And so I think that actually what I’m encouraged by is the conversations that we’re having about the responsible use of technology and the number of people that are participating in the conversation about the responsible use of technology, the number of people who are deciding on what kinds of jobs they’re going to have building software as a consequence of how much that responsibility is baked into their job profile.

I can tell you now, at our company, getting people to join this company, a big reason they join this company is because of the considerations we have around the kinds of effects that we want to create and how we want to mitigate harm. That’s why they’re choosing to work here. I’ve got the choice of incredible engineers as a consequence of that decision.

So I think the way that I see this is, I’m encouraged by the increased conversation on responsibility. I think people are demanding that increased responsibility. People who are doing the jobs are demanding that increased responsibility. And, in fact, I think that that helps us in a pretty significant way in moving towards reducing the potential harms.

Is it going to be perfect? Nope. Is there a perfect piece of regulation? Sorry, that’s not real. Anyone who tells you it is, it’s just not true. Because we don’t under…because that suggests that we understand all of the effects in this complex emergent system. And if that’s true, good! Could someone please tell me, because I would love to know what’s about to happen?

But what I can say is that we can see just far enough, and taking some of the lessons of the past, to say when we make these big shifts, not-so-great things happen to people that are already in a pretty tough spot. And we can be better at doing more to reduce the potential harm.

And so I think there’s an immense responsibility in the design, development, and making accessible technology. And I think it’s no longer an excuse that says, “We don’t really think about that.” Because we’ve already seen it. And we’ve lived, in this lifetime, we’re not waiting multiple generations for people to experience the harm. You can see it right in front of you. And I think that’s different from the past, where there was a big mass of technological change and then you had to wait a generation before you saw the bad things that happened. I mean, you saw some of it but you didn’t see as much of it as you might unless it took 20, 30, 40 years. You can see it within minutes now.

Jen Hancock:

Right.

Farhaan Ladhani:

And so this idea that we’re to be blind to it…

Jen Hancock:

Hmm.

Farhaan Ladhani:

… that’s been deleted.

Jen Hancock:

Yep.

You have, in the past, have talked about how building communities for our future means both integrating sort of that physical world, digital world. Why is that so important? And what are the stakes for doing so?

Farhaan Ladhani:

So, I think the idea that there’s this online world and then there’s the real world, as these two distinct places, isn’t real. I just don’t think it’s true.

Take that statistic I gave you a little while ago. Eight hours a day you spend on screens. Eight hours a day. So if you spend eight hours a day on a screen, and you spend eight hours a day—at least that’s what we’re supposed to spend—sleeping, someone tells me, that means eight hours a day not on a screen. That’s 50-50.

And I don’t understand a storyline that says, “Well, you can just worry about one, don’t worry about the other.”

Or I don’t understand a storyline very much (laughing) that says that these things aren’t inextricably linked with one another. They’re totally linked with one another. In fact, we’re heading face-first into a universe where they’re more and more linked with one another—that someone’s digital identity and their offline identity, and that their persona online and their persona in the real world, are somehow these two separate identities.

In fact, I would argue that they’re becoming closer and closer linked. And that your online persona and your offline persona are kind of the same thing, and they’re reinforcing one another.

So I would argue that we need to move much more quickly to understanding that that is in fact the reality in which we live; and as a consequence, build for it.

So in your world, in the world that you inhabit, I think that there are remarkable opportunities to encourage the breakdown of this line that doesn’t really exist, in ways that encourage people to participate in all sorts of face-to-face opportunities, and to carry those conversations on into the online world. The ones they want to keep; and the ones they want to jettison.

Jen Hancock:

The construction industry is famously slow to adapt. So maybe lay out the stakes here. What happens if we don’t start blending sort of that online and offline worlds as builders? What happens if communities aren’t properly engaged and integrated?

Farhaan Ladhani:

Yeah. So I—my opinion on that is, it’s a competitive disadvantage. Because those that figure out that people are looking for more connection, and that figure out how to foster that connection, they’re the ones who are going to win.

Study after study has talked about how we’re more directly connected online than we’ve ever been before and yet we’re more lonely than we’ve ever been before.

People are just clamouring for that connection. They’re asking for it in so many different ways.

Those builders that figure out how to foster that—by not just saying, “We’re going to put your phone in a box and thank you very much,” but by actually figuring out how to create this dynamic where people’s online self and their real-world self are actually the same person that they express in just two different ways. The ones that figure out how to foster that community connection face-to-face are the ones who are going to attract participation, that are going to be the models for the ones that people replicate and build. They’re going to be the ones that people ask for.

So either you’re in front of it and part of it, or you’re coming up from behind it. But you’re going to get there either way. So I think it’s just a choice. But I think the stakes are non-trivial, because I think those that decide to leap into this and really consider this as a fundamental part of what they do, I just think they’re the winners.

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Jen Hancock:

That was Farhaan Ladhani, CEO of Goodbit.

Thanks for listening to Building Good. If you want to keep hearing conversations about the future of architecture, engineering, and construction, stay subscribed on any podcast app.

Building Good is a Vocal Fry Studios production, in partnership with Bird Construction and Chandos Construction. The producers are Jay Cockburn and Katie Jensen, with production assistance from Jessica Loughlin and Joanne Hignett. I’m Jen Hancock, thanks for listening.

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