The City Meets Suburbia: A ‘Work Near Home’ Revolution
Chart the growth of urban areas next to the prevalence of white-collar jobs in the economy and you’ll see startling correlation. The urban population of the world inflated from 751 million in 1950 to 4.2 billion in 2018, while (using the USA as an example) white-collar workers grew from making up 17.6% of the workforce in the early 20th century to 59.9% in 2002.
There are a lot of factors influencing both of those data points, but the easy reading of the correlation is that urban environments and white-collar workers fuel each-other’s development – that as one grows, so does the other. And for most of modern history, that might hold true. However, advances in technology, transportation, and culture are currently in the process of re-writing that rule.
What happens when cities are no longer the only areas that white-collar workers can achieve maximum productivity? When the digitalisation of labour and the economy leads to a democratisation of commercial geography? Look around you right now and you’ll find out. The work near home revolution is upon us.
The changing role of the suburbs
Suburbs as we know them originated in the UK during the late 19th century, as the middle-class emigrated from an increasingly crowded London to reside in estates on the outskirts of the city. This started a trend that developed over the next century, propagated by better transportation that enabled newly-suburbanised workers to easily commute into the cities they’d left behind.
Fast-forward to the 21st century and suburbs are growing faster than urban areas. Understandably, however, concentrated commercial infrastructure never really left the city environment. The logic behind this makes sense – cities became the central hub for a sprawling population, spread across several smaller suburban areas. Commuting is generally feasible from any suburb into the nearest large city, so there was no need for towering office blocks outside of cities.
But as technology has developed, particularly over the last two decades, it’s become increasingly clear that even offices themselves are no longer strictly necessary. That’s not to say they aren’t important, just that the world could still roughly function without them. And that’s exactly what we saw in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic struck, and the percentage of people working from home rocketed up to ~50%.
People living in cities, suburbs, and rural areas everywhere were suddenly thrust into the same environment – the home office. In other words, where you lived didn’t affect your access to employment.
But this was only an acceleration of an existing trend – stats show that the number of people working from home has been on a gradual incline for years now, perhaps increasing by as much as 140% since 2005.
Work near home as a solution
So, in a world where cities have potentially peaked in their role as population centres and most white-collar work is accessible from anywhere, how much sense does the idea of workers being forced into central city-based offices every day make? Opinion is currently shifting to say it maybe doesn’t make any sense at all.
The result of this cultural and commercial shift is that businesses can now utilise models other than the traditional office-centric one to organise their workforces. The work from home model is one of the popular alternatives, but even it’s biggest defenders would admit that a pure work from home solution isn’t ideal for building company culture or maximising productivity.
The work near home model, however, is a hybrid that perhaps offers the best of both worlds. It proposes that employees can get all of the upsides of working from home without losing the positives that come with working in an office space by making use of coworking or flexible office spaces closer to their home.
On a work near home model, you could switch between working from home and using flexible office spaces near you, depending on your needs. That means no more costly daily commutes to city centres, less congestion on roads and public transport, and more thriving villages, towns, and local high streets. However, since you’d still have the option to work in an office environment, albeit a flexspace instead of a traditional office, you can still reach peak productivity.
Admittedly, the potential success of the work near home model relies on flexspace infrastructure bleeding out of the cities that it’s currently concentrated in to towns, suburban areas, and even rural areas. That process has already begun, though, with many flexible office and coworking operators contributing to a trend of a general officeisation of the high street.
Co-Space, for example, have recently launched a flexspace in Broad Street Mall in Reading town centre while, in Chester, an old Poundworld retail unit is in the process of being converted into a coworking space by Amble and Tatton Consulting. These types of redevelopments are just the tip of the iceberg, but they signal the changing tide of the office property market.
Local workspaces of the future
Most excitingly, the workspaces that are being created outside of cities in increasingly non-urban areas to meet demand from suburban and rural residents are mostly fresh, innovative, and modern.
Because of their nature – being used by a range of individuals from different businesses – they tend to have a greater emphasis on placemaking and community-building. They also often offer more unique facilities than their city-bound counterparts, and are more agile in updating their equipment to reflect changing demand. In many cases, they even go beyond the role of an office and integrate lifestyle-enhancing amenities like on-site gyms or creches.
Worting House, for example, is a flexible workspace based in the countryside just outside of Basingstoke, a small town in Hampshire. It offers things that no city-based flexspace can – workspaces in a Grade II listed Georgian manor house, peaceful surrounding parkland to relax in, and ample car parking space, to name a few.
But outside of the inherent factors that make Worting House such an appealing proposition, they’re also beating many city-based competitors in the area of servicing the needs of modern workers more effectively. There’s an on-site coffee shop run by a local owner, for example, and they are currently planning an on-site nursery to accommodate occupiers’ children during the working day.
The strengths of the workspaces that are popping up outside of urban centres, combined with the growing relevance of the work near home model, might just usher in a new era of the office. And, this time, your workspace will be local to you.
Zoe Ellis-Moore, CEO & Founder
