Mock Research Proposal
Coronavirus had redefined the way people now live, work, and socialize. For this reason, people had to strictly follow safety measures so that pandemic ends soon, which has forced them to stay at home and rethink how they should spend their lives with the sources of earning they used to have. The purpose of this report is to propose a method for reusing the office buildings that have been standing empty since the advent of the current pandemic due to increased working from home.

Recently, the pandemic has changed the way our lives operate. A survey of the precious flu spreads in the world conducted in 2016 suggested that virus spreads occur mostly in offices among well-developed strong adults (Richtel, 2020). It has already been predicted that when the pandemic is over, the workers would be allowed to work from home, making the office buildings only the meeting places for clients (Humberd, Salon & Latham, 2020). It is well-established the offices' needed tasks to be completed that can be done online and virtually, though relationships in firms should be retained with one-to-one meetings, especially with clients. Physical proximity to interactions and building mutual trust are revamped in today's world. If office buildings are kept vacant for long, tax revenues would fall, which is needed to pay community servicers like trash pickers or road repairs (Schwan, 2020).

Years before this pandemic arrived, there had been several pieces of research that supported the reuse of empty office buildings. In Fairfax County, Virginia, Washington, the state law had approved the reuse of empty office buildings for living apartments, schools, co-working spaces, or food storage chambers (Fairfax County, 2017). It was proposed that the board's new use should be approved so that they do not disturb the surrounding neighborhood peace and must follow the specific guidelines for the rebuilt or renovation.

However, there are opportunities and risks for converting an office space into a living one. The most feasible solution for transforming the empty office buildings seems its reuse as houses since more low-income citizens find it difficult to search for a new affordable home in Corona times (Day, 2020). The city development, reuse of the abandoned buildings, hard housing market conditions, and sustainability for the reduction in CO2 emissions are the major drivers for the conversion of the empty office buildings into living spaces so that social welfare is maximized (Remoy & Voordt, 2015). Commercial buildings like office constructions could be more feasible for housing since they have conducive open-space or transforming into housing and has low rentals, especially for hard financial times faced by low-income aggregates of the population. The risks include financial feasibility, damage to neighboring structures, functional adaptability of the building itself with its measurements, legal constraints, and the difference in price expectations of the building rentals by the re0developers and the owners. There is little viability for open space that these vacant buildings provide for converting them into housing. It requires a long public process for its conversion, and the appropriateness for plumbing, kitchen, and wooden structures is to be figured out soon (Berg, 2020).

Methodology

The research methodology that I propose for this study would be the case study method. This method would provide investigating the phenomenon within the context of particular exploration. Various data sources would be researched to adopt several lenses for scrutinizing the problem. The empty office buildings and their conversion into the housing apartments can be studied with this research design so that the procedure, the difficulties that are undertaken during the conversion, and challenges the stakeholders, especially the construction parties, owners, and the common public, could be analyzed in real-life scenarios.

Digital technologies have paved the way for researching in almost impossible ways. The obtaining and sharing of information is now possible with digital ethnography, enabling the researchers to collect behavior data with computer and mobile-based methods (Kaur-Gill & Dutta, 2017). The online environments support gathering important data from the respondents involving platforms like blogging, video dairies, and mobile apps. The elimination of geographical boundaries is done through this type of research since it uses the internet and all the other digital technologies for obtaining data on a wide range and locations. The goal of digital ethnography is to study behaviors and attitudes and also the self-identities that are exhibited by individuals on social media forums.

When the two convergent perspectives of the research are explored, the participatory research design is the best methodology. It involves science and practice of the agenda at hand (Bergold & Thomas, 2012). It is established that participatory research gives the direction, possibility, and usefulness for the research that is to be conducted and the creation of its significance. There are numerous research strategies involve in this methodology, which is used for distinct purposes. Since...…by selecting varied cases for a simplified analysis (Palinkas et al., 2016).

Discussion and Conclusion

The research proposal is to find the best possible way to reuse the office buildings that have been standing empty since the pandemic's arrival. By conducting preliminary literature research, it has been analyzed that employees are happier by staying and home and working remotely. Some want to go back, but the others corroborate that buildings' use should be minimized to only client meetings and tasks should be done home online. Moreover, it has been deduced that the best possible way to reutilize those buildings is to convert them into housing apartments since the low-income groups would gain the most benefit out f. if the empty buildings are kept useless, they will bring a downfall in tax collection, which is used for social welfare purposes. Bringing them into use again would create a maximum advantage for the citizens; however, there are risks and challenges. These would be studied with the help of a case study research methodology with maximum variation sampling. The case study method would involve examining real-life cases related to the same issue in the past. They would involve interviews, another qualitative research methodology, which would help gain in-depth knowledge by combining two or more research methodologies. With maximum variation, the variety of cases from different contexts and geographical locations would help identify the common themes related to issues, challenges, and benefits related to the topic selected for research.

The proposed study's limitations might include obtaining diversified cases online since some websites do not give access to certain locations worldwide. Full articles are not downloaded that would give deeper insights into the risks and opportunities of the problem. Also, some of the cases might be outdated, for which the information would be old, such as that related to construction and financial policies of those times that are no more relevant to the current era.

The future alternatives and direction of this research would be useful for the governments and the construction companies since the end of the pandemic would provide a new roadmap for utilizing facilities and resources in a fresh form. The directions that were unthinkable during the very last year and now contemplated seriously since the future have been drastically changed by Covid-19 worldwide. The local and international policies have to be altered to take novel decisions, such as reusing empty office buildings.…