Cities will soon have third places besides homes, offices

Cities, in future, won’t need just offices and residences but also third places — locations where a professional or a businessman can work and communicate with his office or clients. The third location will differ from a regular office as it will located close to the person’s home and yet come at an affordable price.

Ziona Strelitz, a social anthropologist and workplace strategist, in a study of five major urban agglomerations across the world — New York, Greater London, Paris, Mumbai and Hong Kong — found that an increasing number of people make use of new-age technology to work from a place that is neither office nor home.

“Such places can be informal set-ups such as coffee shops or libraries or formal set-ups like business centre or small office outlets,” said Strelitz, in a tele-conference from London.

In her survey covering 17,800 business owners, she found that 52% preferred business centres, while 48% preferred informal places such as coffee shops or libraries. Mumbai was almost the same: 53% preferred business centres, while 47% were happy with coffee shops.

The greatest reason for the growth of third places globally is something any Mumbaikar can identify with: the desire to be as close to home while working. The other advantage of being in a third place was the human desire for interaction .

Not surprisingly then, Regus, an office solutions provider which co-hosted the tele-conference, is planning to increase its presence in India. Regus has 125 centres in the UK and 400 in the US.