The case for a municipal WeWork
Workspaces that are affordable and accessible are crucial to keep cities thriving and inclusive, should their provision become a city priority?
WeWork, a provider of flexible office space to both individuals and businesses, filed for bankruptcy earlier this month. There are several reasons behind its demise—its problematic governance, its obsession with rapid growth and with going public to please its venture capital backers—but the business case for its existence remains valid: it is hard for freelancers, entrepreneurs, and small companies to access high-quality, flexible workspace in most cities. For all its flaws, WeWork was successful at attracting clients because the spaces it provided were well-located, functional, and accessible (if on the pricier side) without committing to an industry-standard multi-year lease.
As a society, we understand the need for public intervention in the provision of public goods and services that benefit everyone. This is the case of public housing or public transport. Should it be the case of workspaces, too?
The idea isn’t particularly radical. Many cities established public incubators (organisations that provide business training, mentorship, office space and many other services)—an inspiring climate-related example is Rio de Janeiro's Resilience Challenge Incubator. However, the focus of incubators tends to be limited to a small cohort of businesses or to specific sectors, rather than offering all willing entrepreneurs the benefits of early support.
Should providing affordable commercial and industrial workspace become a city priority? There are at least two good reasons for this.
The first has to do with local need. In an ongoing series on how Africa’s youth boom is changing the continent, the New York Times observes that
“about one million Africans enter the workforce every month [...] but fewer than one in four find a formal job.”
The provision of appropriate and affordable workspaces is only one piece of the complex puzzle that needs to be solved to ensure that more young people can join the formal economy, in African cities and beyond. It is quite clear that this is a problem the private sector is not equipped to solve (or interested in solving, depending on one’s political views).
The second relates to the kind of economic system we should be aiming for. Would there be value in providing workspace whose rent doesn’t flow out to international venture capital companies, but is instead re-invested in local services, improved resilience and fairness? This last point is inspired by the increasingly popular principles of Community Wealth Building.
The private sector has a clear role in continuing to operate in this space, but it shouldn’t be the gatekeeper of commercial and industrial workspace provision. There is a good case for mayors to play a more active role and for publicly managed workspaces to ensure cities can remain inclusive and fair.
A side note, possibly entirely incorrect
While writing this newsletter, I couldn’t help but notice that some of the most recognisable start-ups of the 2010s—WeWork, Airbnb, Uber, and a bunch of online food delivery platforms—have had a deeper impact on city living in the last decade (think soaring housing costs, flexible working and co-working, gig economy jobs) than any other technological innovation since the private automobile.
🎧 Listen to the Cities 1.5 Podcast
Since our last newsletter, we have published four new episodes of our podcast Cities 1.5 (here on Apple Podcasts and Spotify):
🙌 In our latest episode, our host David Miller interviews Mayor of Rotterdam Ahmed Aboutaleb and Maurice Kavai (Deputy Director, Climate Change for Nairobi City County) to explore how cities in the Global North and in the Global South are working on improving their resilience to climate change (listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify).
🌞How are cities battling extreme heat? Our host David Miller talks to Eugenia Kargbo (Freetown’s Chief Heat Officer) and former Mayor of Athens Kostas Bakoyannis (listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify).
🛢️How can cities divest from fossil fuels? (Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify). For this episode, we had the pleasure to interview Daniel Zarrilli, who was instrumental in helping New York City commit to divesting, as well as Dr Savannah Cox and Dr Zac Taylor, who are currently working on a Special Issue on urban riskscapes for the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy.
🌍 Sandrine Dixson-Declève, co-president of The Club of Rome, and Councillor Susan Aitken, Leader of Glasgow City Council, joined David in discussing how how cities can put people and planet first and look beyond growth (listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify)
Don’t forget to rate the podcast on your favourite podcast app, it really helps us reach more listeners.
📚 What we are reading
: The Fragile Earth – Writing from The New Yorker on Climate Change. The bright yellow cover caught my attention a few weeks ago. Opening with Bill McKibben’s ‘Reflections: The End of Nature’, the collection chronicles the New Yorker’s climate writing from 1989 to the 2010s. Some pieces tell inspiring tales of human ingenuity, while others seem hauntingly familiar—we've been hearing the same kind of warnings for a long time. It makes me feel even more determined about the climate stories I want to be able to tell. : This wonderfully annotated profile of talk radio host John Ziegler from The Atlantic’s April 2005 issue—which I encountered while reading Consider the Lobster, a fantastic collection of essays by the late David Foster Wallace. The piece reads like a modern commentary on the pervasiveness of conservative ideas, anti-political correctness, and conspiracy theories in talk radio. Concerning to learn how little things have changed in the intervening years and how effective the conservative playbook still is.