DOI: 10.69554/zgeb9036 ISSN: 2043-9156

Opening corporate office space for social good in a context of urban scarcity

Rick Niemeijer
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This paper introduces a practical model in which corporate offices, which are usually underused outside standard business hours, are made available to external organisations in the evenings and at weekends. In the context of scarcity and high real estate prices in Amsterdam the model redefines temporal underutilisation as a social resource and incorporates the ‘S’ in environmental, social and governance (ESG) into corporate real estate decision-making processes. While traditional corporate real estate strategies prioritise efficiency, cost control and workplace experience, there is an increasing interest in developing a strategy that can deliver broader ESG value. This paper will first focus on why is it is necessary to open up corporate office space for social good. The definition and clarification of urban scarcity will be explained against the back of a larger (political) discussion on how to optimise space in a heavily populated and dense country as the Netherlands. Before stepping into how the model actually works, first the conceptual framework of shared space and social value will be laid down. This perspective is based on the idea that built environments do not have to be mono-functional or subject to private governance. Instead, shared access increases the social value of space. After explaining the model in practice, the main question is how the future will look, and moreover how we can extrapolate the current local business model into a global way or rethink the concept of using (office) space. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/.

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