Coworking Is Moving to the Suburbs
With WeWork a shell of its former self, industry leader IWG is betting that hybrid workers outside of big cities are the future.
The industry is betting on locations where employees can go without having to endure long commutes.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
What is flexible office space for? In the heyday of WeWork Inc., the answer seemed to be a big party. WeWork’s high-design, amenity-filled urban spaces were places for like-minded young entrepreneurs and freelancers to gather — a more work-focused rival to membership club chain Soho House & Co Inc., as my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Chris Bryant described it in 2018.
After the pandemic and the November 2023 bankruptcy of WeWork, this approach is having a big influence on how large companies reconfigure their offices in an attempt to persuade employees to spend more time there. But coworking spaces, serviced offices, virtual offices and other variations on the flexible workspace theme seem to have moved on. With hybrid work the new norm, the industry is betting on sedate suburban and small-town locations where employees of big companies and other knowledge workers can escape their basements and guest bedrooms without having to endure long commutes.