Back to (home)work
The spatial history of the workplace, Part 2
Work has always had a dramatic impact on urban space; as cities expand and mutate as industry does, public transport extends, and factories or office blocks become a prominent feature on the skylines of areas not previously used to their presence. But in terms of where we work, we have come full circle. From the home-based workshop, via the local factory and the commutable office, much of the country’s population has, location-wise, been returned wholesale to the days of our forebears by the Covid-19 pandemic. Given how workplaces have shaped the city over the previous millennia, will this return to homeworking have an impact on the way our cities look and feel in the future?
With the workplace as we know it facing an existential crisis, in this section we will ponder the transition back to telecommuting and ask what the return to mass homeworking may do to the urban environment and the workspaces that populate it.
Visit our website for more info!
In the previous article we discussed how the space of the city, particularly of London, has been shaped over time by the places human beings have worked. The home workshop of the pre-industrial age gave way to the factory as technology advanced through the 18th and 19th centuries, while the pollution and slums that this very industrialisation precipitated rendered many of the homes, along with their functional workspaces, practically unliveable for the city’s poorest. New ‘model homes’ were constructed with an eye to improving hygiene while simultaneously banning home-based work, encouraging more and more to work in the rapidly expanding manufacturing industries.
The administration departments of these factories began to take precedent as improvements in telegraphy and transport were made, meaning that the factory and office could finally sever their physical bonds. As a result, factories could move outside the heavily populated areas to the outskirts – and later even further afield – reducing inner-city pollution and leaving the space clear for the emergence of purpose-built offices. The technological advances of the post-war scientific revolution gave us the steel frame and the central ventilation systems that facilitated the rise of the skyscraper office block that dominates central London and its surrounds to this day.
Now for some more history.
Ever since the office has existed there have been advancements in technology that have sought to make the work conducted within their walls more efficient and safer for the workers, in doing so transforming the urban space they occupied.
In the late-19th century the electric lightbulb meant that offices could now build down as well as up and out, and caused less strain on the eyes of the occupants compared to gas or candlelight, particularly in winter months. Around the same time we also saw the development of the mass-produced telephone, telegraph, typewriter and even fax machine. This was the birth of telecommunications.
As mentioned above, there could now be the separation of factory and office: In the age of Taylorism, not only was labour distributed, but also the labourers themselves. But while the technological ability to physically sever ties laid the groundwork for the modern-day office independent of the factory, it also had the perhaps unwanted, but hardly unexpected, consequence of providing workers with the foundations for a return to homeworking.
This would begin with the satellite office, which was seen from the 1970s as a way of reducing the increasing blight of car traffic in cities, which snarled up the roads, hampering deliveries and polluting the air. The increased affordability of computers through the 1980s and the popularisation of the internet and email that followed in the 90s ensured these satellite offices would remain, at least for a good few decades, a permanent workplace outside – but connected to – the central office.
Over time this ‘hub and spoke’ way of working became more and more common as technology increased, with online conference and video calling making it easier to stay in touch with colleagues from afar (would you believe that Zoom and Slack are both almost a decade old!). iPhones, Blackberries, tablets and laptops became all the rage in the mid-2000s meaning work could follow us home, effectively relinquishing the need for a desk in the office – if some work was being done outside the office, couldn’t all of it?
This mode of thinking has increased in popularity over the following decades, and even in the years prior to the Covid-19 crisis the long telecommunications revolution had led to a thirst amongst white-collar professionals for telecommuting. By 2019 there were 1.7 million people in the UK who worked predominantly from home, accounting for 5% of the working population, a rise of 0.7% from 2015. 8.7 million people or 27% of the working population also reported that they regularly worked part of their week outside the office.
Though office buildings were expanding, working from the office was contracting – and for good reason. Studies have shown that remote work tends to lead to higher engagement rates and increased productivity. The New York Times found that “[p]eople who spend between 60-80% of their working hours remote… report the highest engagement rates compared to those who never work off-site”. Even back in 2014, the Harvard Business Review found that those who worked from home effectively completed a whole extra days’ worth of phone calls per week compared to their office-bound colleagues.
So, with the historic rise in homeworking, the crisis has only pushed us further in the direction humanity was already travelling. Now, approaching 10 months of various stages of lockdown, we have realised that much of the work once anchored to the office desk can be conducted more efficiently from the home. 24% of the adult population were working exclusively from home, and 16% furloughed even before this most recent November lockdown hit. The proportion is likely to rise again to the June peak of 38% working only from home as the year rolls on.
Almost all who have worked from home would like to continue the routine at least for some of the week. There are of course good elements to the office – face-to-face contact with colleagues can aid workflows and be a source for socialising. But this does not require a return to the 5-day office week. Alongside the tangible work quality benefits, the telecommuting trend is almost certain to stick around.
But the question on everybody’s lips is, now we know that the future of work lies, at least in some capacity, in the home, what will happen to the offices, and the urban space that surrounds them as they sit empty?
Of course, nobody knows for sure, but there are a few signs that may point us in the right direction.
Some believe that the office skyscraper might become a thing of the past, with physical distancing rules making travelling in an elevator impossible, or at the very least unsafe, and many firms have been estimated to now have 20% more office space than they need. The physical footprint of many of the city’s largest firms are therefore likely to reduce over the coming years. It’s predicted that throughout Europe there will be a drop in demand for office space, and as Aude Bicquelet-Lock from the Royal Town Planning Institute says, ‘putting 7,000 people in the office might be a thing of the past.’ Perhaps organisations will look for alternatives in smaller but interesting buildings in amenity-rich and walkable areas. There may even be a large demand for a more extensive satellite office system, taking the small workspace or co-working space to the areas that people live, allowing them to meet face-to-face in a safe environment – bringing the workspace to the workers so to speak.
Some predict that the co-work space may even become a distinctly suburban feature and encourage more young people and businesses to cater for them to move out of the city centre and bring the suburbs a more vibrant feel. Some recent growth areas such as Granary Square or London Bridge that were regenerated to provide workers with post-work leisure spaces may see a decline as entertainment is decentralised and socialising is concentrated around the home. We have already seen a number of high street eatery chains focussing their efforts into supplying food and employment at their more regional stores than those more central.
The crisis may have an impact on housing itself too. While many can work from home due to the space that they can afford, this is not the case all of the city’s workers. The extra space offered up in urban areas by the potential decline of some offices and their attached carparks, and the fact that more than 1.3 per 100 social residences are empty, mean that new homes could be built or existing ones adapted. Previously rundown community spaces could also be refurbished to include work areas that would dramatically transform the way a large proportion of manual and blue-collar work takes place.
This would remove such workers from the external site of the salon, the garage, the workshop etc and bringing them back into the domestic environment. As social tenants are those most likely to become unemployed over the coming months and years, the space that would allow for homeworking would offer greater job mobility and the chance to retrain and be flexible with hours, and thus empower and enable residents to invest in local economies. One’s neighbourhood could become the place they truly live and engage with rather than just where their accommodation is. Even a few extra sq metres could transform someone’s prospects during this pandemic.
Further, changes to UK planning policy led by Housing Minister Robert Jenrick will also mean developers can convert some of the now surplus office space into flats using permitted development rights. This legislation bypasses the need to secure formal planning permission. However, there are a number of fears that the former offices, not having been designed for living, could lead to poor quality, uncomfortable and unsuitable homes. Others are certainly considering it as a way of utilising the currently defunct inner-city spaces.
Some also think the commute into work may be left behind and disinvested, removing the fantastic urban connectivity that so many urban dwellers, particularly in London, rely on and love. But this has also lead to the consideration that it’s time for investment into new forms of public transport on which social distancing can more easily be undertaken. For example, the expansion of the bus network with the reintroduction of trolley busses would not only make transportation greener but reduce overcrowding on tubes. Better investment in cycle infrastructure would also help with these issues, enabling many to commute entirely outdoors.
Investment in open spaces and parks, as well as expanding beer gardens and covered outdoor seating into car-free roads may also become a priority, providing people with safe places to socialise.
Ultimately, though nobody can fully predict the consequences that the Covid-19 pandemic may have on the urban environment, it seems as though the homeworking revolution, while removing our reliance on the centralised office, will allow positive and exciting developments in city planning, and infrastructure. There’s no way of telling the timescale yet, but it will certainly be interesting to see how the ever-adaptable city will respond to crisis this time over.