by Russell Schiller
The recent change in the Use Classes Order effectively allows offices in Britain to leave the town centre. The new B1 class means that offices no longer have to pretend to be hi-tech to get planning consent before they can locate in fringe-of-town campus estates. It is often assumed that the campus-style hi-tech park format would be taken over by low-density offices, needing just a change of name to business park. American evidence, however, suggests that this is not the only pattern for decentralised offices.
Pressure for offices to leave the town centre has been gathering pace for some years. The new use classes mean that we are now in a period of strategic change in office location. It is therefore an appropriate time for a debate on the form that office development might take outside town centres — and American experience is a useful place to start.
Change in the suburbs
In several American cities low-rise, low-density suburban offices are being redeveloped as offices with a height of 20 to 25 floors, often served by multi-storey parking. This is largely a trend of the 1980s, and its effect is significant.
Offices began to follow the affluent population to the outer suburbs in the 1960s. There was plenty of space, and buildings of less than five floors were the norm. Site cover was low to allow for landscaping, together with surface parking for virtually the entire workforce.
New freeways were built, and many of the fastest growing cities such as Boston, Washington and Atlanta added circular beltways like the M25. The beltways naturally became attractive locations for regional shopping centres, and land values rose rapidly. Junctions between the beltway and the major radial roads in the more affluent suburbs became, in effect, new town centres, but in a loose-knit form stretching for several miles along a corridor, quite unlike the British suburban centre or the traditional American downtown. Examples of these new suburban groupings are Tysons Corner, Washington; Oak Tree Plaza, Houston; North West Corridor, Atlanta; and Costa Mesa, near Los Angeles.
In recent years these corridors have become attractive office locations, but high land values have meant taller buildings than have previously been seen in the suburbs. The high land values resulted in decked parking, and with minimal public transport on the freeway a great deal of staff parking is needed. Four generously laid out spaces per 1,000 sq ft of office space is a common standard. Rents in these new suburban groupings are high: they often approach rents in downtown and, in the case of Atlanta, they have actually passed them.
Atlanta provides a good example of this new form of development. It has seen suburban growth as rapid as in any American city over recent years. Office stock has increased by over 40% between 1983 and 1986. The north-west suburban corridor is centred on the junction of Permiter Highway (the beltway) and the radial freeway 75. It contains 11.6m sq ft in 67 developments, compared with downtown’s 11.1m sq ft. There are eight offices of a height of 16 to 25 floors, all built since 1981 and all grouped around the intersection and Cumberland Mall, the nearby regional shopping centre (see map). The changing height of the developments is shown in the table.
In Atlanta there is certainly no shortage of development sites on the periphery where low-cost offices could be built. What has emerged, therefore, is an office tenant who rejects both the high rise of the traditional downtown and the low-cost campus alternative.
The office users who deserted downtown were those who could afford to do so. They were the routine paper factories and back offices which looked for lower costs and easier access to clerical labour. But they were also the corporate headquarters and regional administrative offices of big companies. Cost was less important for this second group. They moved out because they felt operating conditions would be easier and because there was no compelling reason for them to stay. Commuting time from home was less, and access to the airport was easier. It is this second group which seems to have set the pace for the new suburban office towers.
When offered the alternative of 20 floors at a high rent near a freeway intersection, or two floors at low rent situated some 10 minutes’ drive from the freeway, the former location is felt to have strong advantages, particularly for the company head office. A block of 20 floors forms a prominent landmark. It may even stand out more than 40 floors in the city centre. It offers good views from the windows for the staff and forms a visible presence on a traffic artery. The decked parking which often accompanies these developments is regarded as a plus and not a minus, as it would be in Britain. The car parks are well designed and spacious, offering weather protection, particularly shade in summer, and a shorter walk to the lift.
The final advantage is nearness to shopping. Regional shopping centres seem to act as magnets for office areas. It may be difficult for a British reader to understand why the sight of a shopping centre across the freeway should be such an attraction to an office worker, when it is necessary to use the car to reach it. The time taken will not be much less than from a low-rent location behind the freeway. Proximity to good shopping is nevertheless widely used in promotion and generally regarded as a major asset.
Over the last four or five years, suburban office development has exceeded downtown development throughout America, and much of it has taken place at a higher density on more expensive land than had occurred in the suburbs before. Office developments of 16 to 25 floors perhaps do not count as skyscrapers in a country where 50 floors is commonplace, but they are still far from the two- to three-floor campus offices of the 1970s. The change raises the question of the future of downtown offices.
Future of downtown offices
Within most metropolitan areas the share of office stock found in the city centre has been falling steadily as suburban growth has outstripped downtown. The city centre has, however, usually remained the single largest office concentration. This is in contrast to shopping: in Atlanta, for example, downtown sales rank third behind two suburban regional malls.
In the larger cities like New York and Chicago, and those with a European appearance like Boston, San Francisco and Washington, suburban office growth does not seem to have weakened downtown. Elsewhere the picture is less clear. Downtown often consists of a group of skyscrapers packed into a tight area. It is mainly the home of business services: finance, real estate, the big eight accountants and the large New York law firms. Business services are growing fast, but despite this it has often been necessary for outside action by government and worried business leaders to bolster downtown. There are also examples of some foreign banks, securities firms (stockbrokers) and lawyers abandoning downtown for the more attractive suburban corridors.
Business services in London and New York seem to thrive when grouped together. This suggests that if these services leave downtown in some American cities they would regroup elsewhere. A new suburban corridor might actually replace the old downtown in these cases to become the new de facto city centre.
Another possibility is that the traditional downtown becomes one end of an office corridor which stretches 10 miles or more towards the most affluent suburb. This is the way Los Angeles operates, with Wilshire Boulevard acting as a decentralised High Street stretching from downtown to Century City and Beverly Hills. Atlanta seems to be going the same way, with Peachtree Street linking downtown with the fast-growing adjacent midtown and Buckhead areas. Like Beverly Hills, Buckhead is known as the richest suburb in the city.
Ten years ago the American office scene looked simple: business services operated in downtown skyscrapers while everything else was dispersed in low-density development in the suburbs. Now the pattern is much more complicated. The beltways have put a backbone into the suburbs, fixing the form of the urban structure. New areas of high land values have resulted, giving rise to office groupings which could even threaten the primacy of downtown.
In some respects America seems to be becoming more European. With smaller cars, fewer neon signs and more decked parking, the American suburbs look more familiar to the British eye than 10 years ago.
Conclusion
It is a mistake to believe that Britain will directly follow the American pattern. Perhaps the most important difference between the two countries is that Britain lacks the wide open suburban spaces of America. Decentralisation around London takes place on to an existing settlement network of towns and villages. There is not the opportunity here for the loose-knit American suburban groupings of office blocks and regional shopping centres to form on the same scale as in America. On the other hand, British suburban office centres such as Croydon, Watford and Reading function like downtowns in miniature, with the same problems of congestion and lack of parking.
There are perhaps three lessons from recent American developments. The first is that multi-storey parking can be usefully applied to offices outside town centres, without it counting as a handicap. We have become used to MSCPs designed for the day of the Mini and the Morris Minor. There is no reason why they cannot be spacious and well lit and provide that rarity in Britain — adequate parking.
The second lesson is that high-rise offices outside town centres could be successful in certain cases. The history of isolated tall suburban blocks along the North Circular Road and elsewhere has not been a happy one. American experience suggests that for a corridor of offices of this type to succeed it needs to be located in a high-income area, have good road access, and be accessible to services such as banks and shopping centres. It is the last point which is a problem in Britain, because services are generally in town centres, making car access difficult. But as out-of-town shopping is growing there could be opportunities, and this leads to the third lesson.
The third lesson is the importance of access to good shopping, where, in turn, there is good parking. No out-of-town regional shopping centre has been built in the South East since Brent Cross in 1976, but there are several proposals. If one were to be built in Surrey or the Thames Valley, a high-rise office corridor could be viable nearby.
The change in the Use Classes Order has coincided with the emergence of provincial office development after a long hibernation. There could well be an upsurge in decentralised office building taking a variety of forms. American experience suggests that the low-rise office park, although successful, is not the only form. High-rise groupings are possible, but only when the circumstances are favourable. These favourable circumstances will not happen often, but it is possible to think of occasions when they might occur.