Networking – The Demise of the Office and The Challenge to Cities

Networking is not just a term used to describe making, maintaining or renewing contacts. In the IT era, the term is more closely aligned to the concept of computers joined together so that they can communicate. As a concept, the word though contains a plethora of historical narratives – from a network of canals, superseded in their industrial requirement by a network of railways, which in turn were superseded by a highway network, that appears to be running in parallel with the information super highway network. 

Western industrialisation has been characterised by the development of each type of network, as they conveyed goods, products and raw materials between markets. Cities and towns developed buildings and infrastructure to enable the production, consumption, financing and exchange of all goods, and also ideas to bring industrial efficiencies to the whole process, as well as innovation for new goods and services.

In the UK we have a long history of towns and cities growing, prospering, declining, re-inventing themselves and, in some cases, giving way to other towns and power centres as technology develops, and new networks make the role and purpose of one town not much more than an historical footnote. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the principal characteristic of the growth of the major cities, throughout the UK, has been the concentration of offices, and the focus within them of higher order office based skills.

For a short period, the role of cities as centres for office development was challenged by the concept of business parks away from city centres, but that challenge has largely passed. The re-focus on city centres as locations for offices has however, channelled thought and ideas as to the role of the office, and how the spaces occupied by its workers are being used. Travel to city centres is expensive and time consuming. Commuting is never a favourite pastime, and the space in most offices is not always the most rewarding and inviting of environments.

The internet has brought with it the reality that computers do not have to be physically joined together – and co-workers do not have to share the same space to achieve the same job. The need for offices is questioned more and more – and the implications this has for the future economic roles of towns and cities possesses greater threats to their future than anything envisaged by the threats to shops on the high street posed by internet retailing.

Andrew Bounds of the FT reported on research by Condeco in his column on 21 April 2015 that the concept of the individual desk is a “dead concept”. The research reported findings that desks go unused for vast periods of time, and meeting rooms may not be used for half a working day. The hidden costs of retaining unused space could be enormous.

In particular, the research found that there is a complete break between the perception by office managers as to how office space is utilised, and how it is actually used. The reality is that space is used half as much as is perceived. And the perception of utilisation is that space is used on 60% -70% of the time. (Forgetting that time in this conversation is limited to that of a working day, and so in reality, nearly all office space is redundant in any event for about 12 hours out of 24.  On the basis of Condeco's research, much office is space is used for not much more than 3 hours out of 24!).

The exchange of ideas through wireless communication offers a significant opportunity as to how people work, let alone as to how people can work away from an office and still work together. The demise of the office has long been forecast – largely because the office environment has long been held as not one that people really want to spend all their working lives in.

However, the threat to the office as a building defining city centres is doubtless now real. If the office is characterised by the provision of desk and work spaces (if not, then what function does an office have anyway?), of equal characterisation is the provision of the office phone. Simply ask, how many desk bound users rely on their office phone to undertake their office based tasks?

Mobile technology, together with the increased flexibility of working anywhere but the office, has placed a very large question over the role of offices in the next wave of the evolving term of the network.  In doing so, there is a new gauntlet to cities - what will be your economic role when the office has disappeared?

*Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any part of Savills plc or any of its associated companies, nor are any assumptions made reflective of the position of Savills plc and its associated companies.