Royal Bank of Canada, which is one of the largest employers in the country, sent an internal memo to employees this week with statements like these:

“When our teams come together on-site more frequently, we are solving complex problems faster, learning and growing more effectively, and ultimately building deeper connections with one another."

"Without frequent in-person engagement our long-term competitiveness is at risk."

I feel strongly that we are going to continue to see more of this. Current work-from-home arrangements are not at all static. We have not yet reached a post-pandemic equilibrium. That will likely take a few more years.

More flexibility, rather than less, is something we all want, and I don't believe that's going away. But I do believe that for the most productive and congealed teams, the default workplace will remain the office.

P.S. Office Space (embedded video above) is a great movie.

Density, which is a company that provides occupancy-tracking sensors, announced this week that it has just completed a $125 million funding round at a ~$1 billion valuation. This is their Series D. Official announcements, here and here.

On a practical level, the company provides workplace space analytics. They offer sensors that allow companies to anonymously measure how people are using their offices.

How long people are at their desks for (possibly weird), which conference rooms are most used, where people socialize, and so on. With the idea being that if you measure it, you can then optimize it. It's about how to best use your real estate.

But their overarching mission is "to measure and improve out footprint on the world." Their ambitions seem to go beyond just office space. It's about how we occupy our cities, and using analytics to more efficiently design and build them going forward. And that's pretty interesting.

I'm not intimately familiar with the company, but I thought I would share the news with all of you in case you'd also like to check them out.

Amy Bath needs to leave comments here on ATC more often because she has great feedback and insights.

This morning she tipped me off to a brand new co-working space on the east side of Toronto called East Room. If you haven’t yet heard of it, I would encourage you to check out their website. They’re in a gorgeous heritage building along the Don Valley and they seem to have executed really well. I love their design aesthetic.

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They currently offer two different memberships: a resident membership ($500/month) and a club membership ($250/month).

This is exciting to me because I have a soft spot for both good design and the east side of Toronto. But probably more importantly, it speaks to the changing nature of work and the workplace, as well as to the shifts in how space is being consumed.

Co-working spaces are, of course, blowing up all over the world from Philadelphia to Berlin. The internet has empowered new ways to freelance and make money, and these kinds of spaces are really a result of that. Because even though it’s entirely possible for many of us to work remotely at home, we still crave the social interaction that comes from being within an office environment. And that’s a big part of what these spaces are. They’re a social fabric.

Amy’s hope is that condos will eventually start including amenity spaces that are similar to co-working spaces, and I think that’s a really interesting idea. The challenge, however, is that most developers today (and property managers) aren’t equipped to operate these kinds of environments.

But maybe it’s only a matter of time before some do become equipped, because I’m sure we’re going to see more, not less, of these kinds of urban spaces.

Images: @eastroom_