Agglomeration In the Flexible Working Era: The Micro-location Choices of Co-working Offices

The emerging co-working space phenomenon provides a unique case for the knowledge spillover under the hybrid working style. We investigate the micro-location choices of co-working offices at the postcode district level. With the co-working space locations from 12 co-working operators in central London during 2009-2020, results from the conditional logit model show that, the co-working offices tend to choose the districts with higher industry diversity, a higher proportion of Culture and Creative Industry (CCI) business, or where the local industries contain more “teleworkable” job types. Meanwhile, co-working spaces tend to locate at those where start-up firms concentrated, echoing that the influences of knowledge spillover differ among firms’ life cycles. The results are robust when controlling the business strategies of co-working office providers, as well as the infrastructure, connectivity, and urban density at the local level. The findings cast light on the discussion of spatial clustering and micro-location choices with the case of sharing economy. It also shares substantial policy implications on the strategy design of boosting agglomeration benefits and productivity returns with co-working space.