Smart cities and digital workplace culture in the global European context: Amsterdam, London and Paris

Abstract

Until recently, knowledge-intensive work activities have predominantly taken place in office buildings as a specialized form of economic infrastructure. New digital technologies together with an economic and organizational transition from closed firms to open platforms has changed the pattern of work within the modern metropolis. The office building is no longer the sole workplace typology and work activity has intensified in other urban locations. The questions then are: "How might smart cities reinterpret workplace culture at the urban scale outside the framework of office buildings typology?" and "Which tools and methodologies can be used to make digital workplace culture visible at the urban scale?" In order to answer these questions, workplaces are observed not as private architectural spaces but as compositions of "subjective urban experiences". A Twitter data analysis provides evidence of workplace spatial culture within the innovative global cities of Amsterdam, London and Paris, interpreted as behavior settings. This analysis shows that office pattern locations are generally distributed independently to knowledge intensive business services and workplace demand, as expressed through social media analyses. In addition to office buildings, transit hubs, urban amenities and new digital services play a key role in reframing workplace location. Moving beyond generic visions for digital work in outer spaces, big data therefore provides specific insights and incentives for considering workplace design at the urban scale.