I just read about a popular co-working company in New York called Framework. The concept is super simple. They rent single-person office pods (see above). Each one is sound insulated and has a sitting/standing desk, a filing cabinet, a kettle, a french press, and a small fridge. And at their latest location in Williamsburg, these rent for $820 per month. Their tagline is "your home office away from home" and I think that's a good way of describing the offering. Because let's consider the math.

These pods are 8 feet x 8 feet. So at $820 per month, one would be effectively paying about $12.81 per square foot in rent, which I would assume is significantly higher than average apartment rents in the city. If you take the present value of $820 per month over 25 years at a rate of 5% (to generally simulate mortgage payments), you get close to $140k in value. My point being that if you can afford an additional $820 per month for an office pod, then you could likely afford to rent or buy a home with an additional 64 square feet.

But from what I can tell, that's not necessarily the main problem that Framework is solving. The key words seem to be: "away from home." Home can be distracting for some people and in some situations. If you're trying to get serious work done, I can see why shuttering yourself in a pod would be an attractive solution.

Photo via Framework

Let's check in on office utilization (in Toronto). The last time we talked about this was in April. At that time, the average weekly utilization figure was 63%. The peak day -- Wednesday -- was 73%. And the low day -- Friday -- was 40%. Today, well as of September 15, these numbers are now 69%, 79%, and 39%, respectively (see above chart). So we continue to climb. The only slight downward trend is Fridays. People don't like coming into the office on Fridays. Still, the average is up 6% over the span of about 6 months. This makes you continue to wonder: When does this level off? I also don't know what this index looked like before 2020. Are we back, or not yet?

One of the things that I have noticed while walking around Lyon is that there seems to be a lot of office space right at street level.

And most of it does not seem to have a consumer-facing element where people just walk in off the street.

There’s something nice about seeing beautiful spaces and people sitting at their desks (I walked past people sitting on exercise balls). It’s another way of animating the street.

Personally, I’d love to have an office right at ground level, similar to the above. But it’s not usually where our minds immediately go. We usually default to retail. Or at least I do.

So I’m going to work to remove this blind spot from my mental models. Office right on the street can clearly work really work.