Are you ready for the new geography of work?

The latest in Density’s Workplace Benchmark research series, The New Geography of Work, examined data the first half of 2023 vs. the first half of 2024 to compare year-over-year trends data across 25,723 spaces in North American offices.

1. Major metros are lagging; mid-sized cities and suburbs are surging.

Offices in major metros are lagging compared to their counterparts in suburbs and mid-sized cities. While peak utilization surged by 7% in the past year in suburbs and mid-sized city offices, it slumped by 8% in major metros.

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2. RTO and utilization don’t always go hand-in-hand.

Workplaces studied in major metros have stricter in-office policies - 64% require at least 2 days in office, versus 38% of suburban workplaces and 28% of mid-sized city workplaces. 

However, despite having the strictest policies, major metros have seen a negative trend in utilization (dropping by 8%). This suggests there are other factors that weigh into utilization, including the longer commute times in big cities.

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3. Less waste year over year, but major metro offices are spending the most on wasted space

Compared to H1 2023, all markets wasted less space in H1 2024 (down 9% overall), but one third of space still sat empty the majority of the day.

Offices in major metros have the highest cost of wasted space - wasting an average of $271,900 per floor on space used less than an hour a day.

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4. Half of meeting room use is single occupancy.

While solo meeting room use was slightly lower in 2024 versus a year prior (48% versus 51%), this is still essentially half of meeting room use. This is even higher than what we saw for tech workplaces, where 36% of meeting room use was by one person.

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Download the report now.