Conceptualising and measuring the location of work: Work location as a probability space

Abstract

There is currently considerable interest in workers performing tasks from a variety of workplaces, such as co-working spaces, transport-networks and cafés. However, it remains difficult to ascertain the extent to which this workplace mobility is altering urban economic geography, since most analyses of the location of economic activity in cities are based upon census-type data that assume a unique place of work for each worker. In this paper I propose a framework that extends the concept of place of work: work is probabilistically assigned to different types of workplace according to the proportion of work time spent in each. The limitations of census data are discussed and illustrated, after which the framework is operationalised in an exploratory survey. Census data suggest a modest increase in workplace mobility, with most work still taking place either at home or in a fixed workplace. The paper’s principal contribution is to explain these data’s limitations and show how work location can be operationalised as a probability space.