CBRE recently published this report looking at the impact of the “high-tech software/services industry” on the North American office market. 

Here are a few highlights:

- Since 2010, tech has created ~1.1 million jobs in the US at an annual growth rate that is 3x the national average.

- Seattle currently has the fastest tech job growth in North America. This is the first time in 7 years that San Francisco hasn’t been at the top of their list.

- Silicon Valley, Toronto, New York, and Los Angeles all added more than 10,000 tech jobs from 2016 to 2017.

- The biggest “momentum markets”, relying on 2016 and 2017 data, are Montreal, St. Louis, and Seattle.

- Over the past two years (Q2-2016 to Q2-2018), Atlanta, Los Angeles, Orange County, Seattle, and Portland have all seen double-digit rent growth.

One figure that also stood out for me was this one here showing the relationship between US venture capital investment and the average asking rent for office space in San Francisco.

If you’d like to download the full report, click here. You’ll need to sign up for an account with CBRE, but it’s free to do that.

I am a big fan of the company Squarespace. They have a great and beautiful product. I use them for globizen.com.

Recently they moved into a new office in Lower Manhattan (98,000 sf), which was a consolidation of 4 distributed offices. The interiors were designed by New York-based A+I.

Not surprisingly, it’s a beautiful space:

(Photography by Magda Biernat via Contemporist)

But two other things stood out for me. 

One: The amount of informal working/meeting spaces. I really had to look for the conventional office seating.

Two: The ground floor presence and the lobby which doubles as a possible event space.

For consumer-facing companies, I am really attracted to having a street presence and having spaces that can be programmed. It’s a way to engage and plug in to what’s happening beyond the office. Here’s a related example.

I’m not sure if their narrative is the same as mine, but regardless: cool space.

Last month it was announced that Amazon will be taking 127,000 square feet across 5 floors in a new office tower in Toronto’s emerging South Core neighborhood. The space will be used for about 800 employees and they’re expected to take occupancy this fall.

At the same time, I learned that Amazon will be joining Apple (positioned 6 floors below them in the same tower) and Cisco in South Core.

On top of all this, a friend of mine then tweeted out a list of major tenant re-locations here in the city. The data is from CBRE and the timeframe is from 2009 to 2014 (Q1).

The first thing I noticed when I looked at the data is that there’s a clear trend towards downtown. Perhaps that was the point of the study, but it’s still interesting nonetheless. 

From Google and Deloitte to eBay and Aol, every single tenant in the CBRE list is or will be moving downtown (or to the shoulders of downtown).

Here’s what that looks like from a regional scale (red marker is where they were; green marker is where they are going):

And here’s what it looks like zoomed in closer:

This, of course, is a trend that has been happening for years. But I still think it’s worthwhile repeating how clearcut it seems to be. 

Companies know that their greatest asset is human capital. And they have quickly realized that a lot of young smart people want to live and work in dense walkable communities. They’re simply moving to where people already want to be.

So here’s a question for the Architect This City community: On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is a company’s location when determining whether or not you’d like to work for them? Let’s talk about it in comment section below.