This fascinating research puts a new perspective on where businesses should locate their offices and compete for talent.

Research by Richard Florida, Vladislav Boutenko, Antoine Vetrano, and Sara Saloo reveals the rise of a new type of city, the “Meta City.”

The Harvard Business Review (HBR) article “The Rise of the Meta City” explores the research and findings.

The findings defy the prediction that global cities will die post-pandemic, and are reinventing themselves instead.

Through digital technology and remote work, many employees can participate in a city's economic life without actually living there. They can keep their jobs in one city whilst working most of the time in another.

These employees live in the “Meta City” – a web of cities.

Patterns

The spread of employees over the past years was not random, as we may have thought, but followed clear patterns.

“As workers spread out from major cities, they often followed others in their professions, creating clear ties between major hubs and smaller satellite cities. Think: finance workers leaving New York for Miami; tech workers leaving the Bay Area for Austin, Texas; workers in London decamping for Portugal or Spain. Mapping these connections and talent flows across the Meta City — between the hub and the satellite locations that comprise it — provides a powerful new lens to view our evolving economic geography and the future of corporate location.”

Whereas historically, cities have expanded as transportation technologies have developed, this expansion is not just a physical one but a virtual one as well. The city no longer faces physical limits in its ability to grow. Digital technologies have enabled cities to grow in new, complex ways.

Mapping

“The networked Meta City is above all else a city of flows and connections. And the most important flow today is the flow of talent.”

The researchers used LinkedIn data regarding talent flow across global cities. This reveals the cities central to the global system, which function as satellites in the Meta City system. The research included flows between 50-plus global cities.

When a city registers as a top-25 destination for talent flows, it gains a point. Thirty-five leading global cities emerged.

The cities are separated into four tiers:

Global superstar hub:            score more than 30

Global talent hubs:                score between 16 and 30

Significant hubs:                     score between 11 and 15

Regional hubs:                       score between 5 and 10

This image shows the 35 global cities and their ranking.

Talent flow 

For three cities, the researchers drilled down into the data to see the flow of talent between cities. They did this for London and New York as the Global Superstar Hubs and for San Francisco because it stands as the world’s leading high-tech hub. This newsletter will only look at the connections and flow between New York and other locations. You can reference the HBR article for the flows between London and San Francisco.

The image below shows New York’s close ties to Boston, Philadelphia and Washington DC. It also has considerable talent flows to two superstar cities located much further away: Los Angeles and London.

“Within the United States, New York has significant talent flows with San Francisco, Chicago, Miami, Atlanta, and Austin (all among its ten most-connected cities), and with Charlotte, North Carolina; Seattle; Dallas; Houston; and Denver. Across the world, New York has significant talent connections to Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai, and New Delhi, in India; Paris; Dubai and Abu Dhabi, in the UAE; Singapore; Shanghai; and Hong Kong.”

Rethink

Organisations must change how they think of head offices, innovation centres, satellite offices, home offices, etc. They must understand the Meta City to inform their remote working models.

Business leaders need to think about these flows.

·       Who is coming to the city?

·       Where are they coming from?

·       Where do they go when they leave?

·       How do the cities work together?

Looking at the connection and the flow of talent informs location strategies. It helps companies ensure they have the virtual and physical presence that suits their needs.

Tracking where talent comes from and where it goes informs talent-sourcing strategies. It tells business leaders where there is a density of talent in their industry and where they should put satellite offices.

The research also informs organisations of the ‘special’ connections between cities. For example, the largest inflow of talent to Miami is from New York, and the largest outflow from New York is to Miami. This makes Miami a satellite of New York. There is a similar relationship between San Francisco and Austin.

While the return-to-office battle ensues, with some organisations giving employees total flexibility and others mandating a full-time return to the office, most organisations are in the middle. These are mandating the number of days employees must attend the office.

The rise of the Meta City shows that the office or home mentality must change.

“The rise of the Meta City creates a new logic with which corporations can respond to these shifts. Businesses must move away from the simplistic binary choice of swapping big office buildings in superstar cities for home offices. Location strategy is not just about cutting costs and getting rid of obsolescent real estate — it’s increasingly about balancing locational flexibility with maintaining solid organizational culture and connectivity. As such, it involves managing a range of different types of workspaces across the Meta City’s hub and satellite locations.”

Organisations must understand and plan for:

·       Mobility of talent between hubs and satellite centres

·       Location of offices near transport hubs

·       Location of satellite offices

·       Ability to be agile and flexible with location strategies and recalibrate as circumstances change

·       Attraction and retention of talent

Conclusion

The post-pandemic era has created a new city that combines the physical and digital worlds. The connections and flow of talent mean location planning is more critical than ever.

An organisation may now have a portfolio of global locations to manage, including the head office, innovation centre, and satellite offices.

The organisations that thrive in this new era of work will be the ones open to new concepts, such as the Meta City and the global talent hub, significant hubs, and regional hubs. They will create location strategies and plans informed by the connections and flows. They will manage a range of different types of workspaces. They will know where the talent exists for their industry and establish a local presence. They will attract and retain the talent they need to succeed.