Futurist Outlines Factors Driving Demand

Snyder, who is Life-Styles Editor of The Futurist magazine as well as an author of books and magazine articles, says the five industries and organizational sectors most likely to grow are: medicine and health, education, non-profit organizations, facilities management as a part of the outsourcing movement, and the recycling of industrial era cities. While various factors will affect how these industries, organizations and trends will evolve, Snyder says, "We are in a genuine technological revolution" today because of advances in computer technology. "The computer is just as revolutionary as the electricity or the steam engine or the printing press, and each of those technologies was so powerful that it transformed society," he says. However, the full impact of the computer revolution has yet to be felt, and society will undergo difficulties and upheavals before the full benefits of that revolution are realized, Snyder points out. He explains that previous technological revolutions "changed where people lived, what they did for a living, where they worked and how they worked," and the computer revolution will do the same things for today's world. Those changes, in turn, will have far-reaching implications for developers, owners and investors in office and industrial properties. As non-profits grow, for example, they will need to occupy more office space. This is just one of the many inferences that can be drawn from Snyder's report for NAIOP, which is titled "Fixed Assets in Changing Times: The Strategic Context of Office and Industrial Property in America."

Among the myriad points in Snyder's study, which cites US Bureau of Labor Statistics figures and other data sources, are some that surprise many people, he says. For example, Snyder says, "One of the things that seems to surprise everyone is that retailing is the second largest growth area in terms of employment." When the Internet first boomed, he says, "there was a casual assumption that retail was going to go away." But in fact, the business futurist says, Internet sales today amount to only 2% of the total and are projected to eventually reach only 10% to 15% of total retail sales, even by the most optimistic forecasts. "The vast majority of retail sales will continue to be done on a face-to-face basis," he says, which has implications both for retail space and for employment growth in that sector.

One reason that the full impact of the computer revolution has yet to be realized is that "We're just now entering the transformational stage of the information revolution," Snyder observes. "The technology only really got mature in the middle of the 1990s." Snyder describes himself as a "certified optimist," but he says his view of where the computer revolution will lead is based not just on his inherent optimism but on research into current and historical data and trends. "What's important is that just like the other revolutions, there will be a huge increase in prosperity from this. It is not happening yet, but it will happen," he says.