Could Neighbourhood Co-working Spaces Help Richmond Hill’s Traffic?

Neighbourhood coworking spaces offer a middle ground between the kitchen table and the commute to Toronto. Could they also reduce traffic, keep spending local and help bring more daytime life to Richmond Hill’s commercial areas?

By Editorial Board

Richmond Hill spends a lot of time thinking about how to move commuters.

Wider roads, better transit, subway extensions, traffic signals and cycling infrastructure are all parts of that discussion. But there is another question we ask much less often:

What if, instead of finding better ways to move people long distances to work, we could bring some of their workplaces closer to home?

The work-from-home revolution showed that thousands of office workers do not necessarily need to travel to a central office every day. But it also exposed the limitations of working permanently from home. Employers worry about productivity, collaboration and workplace culture. Employees may struggle with isolation, distractions or simply not having an appropriate workspace.

Neighbourhood coworking could offer a third option: not home, and not the downtown Toronto office, but a professional workspace five, 10 or 15 minutes away.

It is an idea that could have implications well beyond office culture. If enough Richmond Hill residents shortened their commute, could it make at least a dent in traffic congestion? And if those workers remained in Richmond Hill during the day, could their coffee, lunch, shopping and other spending help local businesses at the same time?

The idea is not entirely new

The federal government already operates a version of distributed working through its GCcoworking program.

The program currently has 13 locations across Canada, including several in Ottawa and Gatineau and one at 655 Bay Street in Toronto. More than 15,000 federal public servants from over 50 departments and agencies are registered to use the spaces. The locations include workstations, collaborative areas, technology and workplace security standards.

The federal government’s employment policies are not necessarily a model Richmond Hill or private employers would copy exactly. But GCcoworking demonstrates that a very large employer can provide professional workplaces outside a worker’s traditional departmental office.

Interestingly, Richmond Hill already recognizes teleworking as part of transportation policy. On its sustainable transportation webpage, the City lists teleworking alongside walking, cycling and public transit as options that can help counter increasing traffic congestion, pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

Neighbourhood coworking essentially asks whether teleworking can be taken one step further.

Instead of choosing between a long commute to a Toronto office and working from the kitchen table at home, neighbourhood coworking offers a third option: a professional workspace close to home, with the structure of an office but without the full commute.

How does Strong Towns sees it

Strong Richmond Hill also reached out to Chuck Marohn, founder of Strong Towns, to ask whether neighbourhood coworking spaces could offer an alternative to both working from home and commuting to a centralized office.

Marohn was enthusiastic about the concept, although he questioned whether it should even be viewed as a compromise. “I think these are awesome. The idea of neighbourhood coworking spaces, I don’t think needs to be thought of as a compromise. I think it should be something that’s very normal acceptable.”

For Marohn, however, the key is scale. A successful neighbourhood coworking space, he said, “is a use scaled to the neighbourhood.” Rather than introducing a large conventional office building into a residential area, he believes these workplaces should fit naturally into the existing neighbourhood.

“If you came and said we’re gonna build a coworking space, which is gonna be four storey office type building, I would say OK it’s not super offensive to me, but good luck getting that passed.”

Instead, Marohn sees opportunities to adapt existing buildings or add small-scale spaces that resemble the development already around them. “taking existing homes and building a coworking space, taking empty space between two spaces and building something that’s scaled to the rest of the neighbourhood but have it serve as an office space as opposed to a house…cool!”

Former schools, he suggested, can be particularly well suited to this kind of reuse. His own office is located in a building that once served as a school.

Marohn also pointed to his own daily experience. He walks to his office through a residential neighbourhood and a park, illustrating how bringing small-scale workplaces into neighbourhoods can change not only commuting patterns, but everyday quality of life. “if you had other commercial opportunities here in this residential neighbourhood that’d be great! That’d be great for people’s quality of life and would make more people wanna live here.”

“I think these are awesome. The idea of neighbourhood coworking spaces, I don’t think needs to be thought of as a compromise. I think it should be something that’s very normal acceptable.”

Charles Marohn

His comments add an important qualification to the coworking idea: bringing workplaces closer to home does not necessarily mean importing office districts into residential neighbourhoods. It could instead mean allowing small, adaptable workplaces to become another normal part of the neighbourhood.

In Richmond Hill, a small version is already happening

For Lena Guirguis, co-owner of Richmond Hill’s FlexSpace Inc, the concept is less hypothetical than it might sound.

“This is actually a topic we’ve thought quite a bit about, because we see firsthand why people are looking for something between working from home and commuting into Toronto every day,” Guirguis told Strong Richmond Hill.

“We absolutely think a neighbourhood coworking model could work in Richmond Hill, and in some ways, we’re already seeing it happen.”

Flex Space has not only attracted freelancers and individual remote workers. Guirguis says employers have already experimented with precisely this arrangement.

“Over the last four years, Flex Space has offered corporate membership arrangements to three different organizations as an alternative workspace option for their employees. We also have many individual members who technically work from home, but come to Flex Space because working from home every day just doesn’t work for them.”

The reasons can be surprisingly ordinary.

“Sometimes it’s as simple as needing to get away from the kitchen table, the dog barking during a meeting, family distractions, or just wanting a quiet place where they can properly focus. They still want the flexibility of remote work, but they also want somewhere professional they can go without making the full commute downtown.

“That’s really where we see neighbourhood coworking fitting in.”

The compromise employers might accept

The attraction is not difficult to understand from an employee’s perspective. Cutting a one-hour commute down to 10 or 15 minutes gives someone back a substantial portion of their day.

The bigger question is whether employers would accept it.

“For employers, it creates a middle ground between requiring employees to come into a centralized office and expecting them to work from home all the time,” Guirguis said.

“An employer could give staff access to a professional workspace closer to where they live, whether that’s a few days a week, a certain number of hours each month or simply when they need it.”

But putting a desk and Wi-Fi in an empty storefront would not necessarily be enough. Guirguis says employers would need confidence that workers have reliable internet, private space for calls, meeting rooms, appropriate technology and the professional environment necessary to do their jobs.

There is some evidence that fears about hybrid work and productivity deserve more nuance.

A six-month randomized controlled trial involving 1,612 employees at the technology company Trip.com found that employees working from home two days a week had similar performance reviews and promotion outcomes to employees working entirely in the office. Job satisfaction improved and resignations fell by about one-third.

That study examined working from home, not neighbourhood coworking, so it cannot tell us whether a Richmond Hill coworking network would produce the same results. But it does weaken the assumption that physical presence at one centralized office is automatically necessary for productivity.

And coworking could potentially address some of the problems that make home working difficult in the first place.

But would it actually reduce traffic?

This is where the idea needs some caution.

A coworking space does not eliminate a commute. It changes its length.

Someone who normally drives from Richmond Hill to downtown Toronto might instead drive several kilometres to a workspace within Richmond Hill. That is still a car trip.

But distance matters.

“If someone can get to a proper workspace in 10 or 15 minutes instead of spending an hour or more commuting each way, that can make a meaningful difference to their day,” Guirguis said.

Research suggests that the potential transportation effect can be substantial, although it depends heavily on where coworking spaces are located and who uses them.

A 2025 study modelling near-home coworking in England and Wales found that, under a scenario in which car commuters working outside their home area instead travelled to nearby coworking locations, combined travel time and distance could fall by more than 70 per cent. That is a modelled scenario, not evidence that opening coworking spaces automatically cuts real-world congestion by 70 per cent.

Other research on coworking and sustainable mobility similarly warns that the benefits depend on behaviour and location. If workers drive considerable distances to a coworking facility, or employers keep the same amount of office space while additional coworking space is created elsewhere, some of the environmental benefit can disappear.

That suggests Richmond Hill would need a distributed model rather than one enormous coworking centre.

A handful of smaller workplaces near neighbourhoods, commercial areas and transit could make the trip genuinely local. Ideally, at least some workers could walk, cycle or take a short transit ride there.

The goal would not be to eliminate every commute. It would be to turn some 30-, 45- or 60-minute commutes into 10- or 15-minute ones.

Whether enough people would participate to noticeably affect congestion is a question that would need real local data.

The unexpected benefit: keeping the commuter in Richmond Hill

Transportation, however, may only be half of the story.

When a Richmond Hill resident commutes to Toronto for work, their physical presence leaves Richmond Hill with them for much of the day.

So can some of their spending.

“When people work locally, they tend to spend locally,” Guirguis said. “They grab coffee, buy lunch, run errands and use nearby businesses throughout the day. Instead of all of that daytime activity leaving Richmond Hill with the commuter, more of it stays within the community.”

That could be particularly interesting for Richmond Hill’s traditional downtown and other commercial areas that need consistent weekday activity.

A neighbourhood coworking hub does not need hundreds of employees to behave like a conventional office tower. Twenty, 30 or 50 people arriving regularly can become customers for a nearby café, restaurant, pharmacy, grocery store, barber or other business.

And this economic-development argument has an interesting precedent in Richmond Hill itself.

When the City approved plans for a new Civic Precinct at Yonge Street and Major Mackenzie Drive in 2016, it specifically argued that the development could help revitalize downtown because the municipal workplace would draw hundreds of people downtown every day.

The underlying economic logic is the same: workers create daytime activity.

The City also currently offers incentives for office development and Village revitalization. One stated purpose of its Community Improvement Plan is to create more opportunities for local employment and improve Richmond Hill’s live-work balance.

Perhaps coworking deserves to be considered part of that same conversation.

Should the City lead the experiment?

There is another possibility.

Instead of simply encouraging private employers to use neighbourhood work hubs, Richmond Hill could test the concept itself.

Not every municipal employee needs to be scattered around the city. Customer-facing services, Council functions, specialized facilities and teams that benefit from working together still need appropriate centralized workplaces.

But some desk-based, non-customer-facing employees could potentially be offered the option of working periodically from smaller municipal or shared workplaces closer to where they live.

The City would not necessarily need to build anything.

It could test existing coworking businesses, lease small amounts of underused commercial space, or examine whether existing municipal facilities could accommodate professional work areas.

One pilot location could even be deliberately placed in an area where Richmond Hill wants more daytime activity.

Then measure it.

How far did participating employees commute before and after? How much time did they save? How did they travel to the local hub? Did productivity change? Did workers prefer it to home? Did managers? What did it cost per employee? And did nearby businesses see any measurable benefit?

If the experiment failed, the City would have learned something without building a massive piece of infrastructure.

If it worked, Richmond Hill would have something much more persuasive to show private employers than another promotional campaign.

It could say: we tried it ourselves. Here are the results.

There are still reasons to be skeptical

Coworking is not going to “solve traffic.”

Most Richmond Hill jobs cannot be done remotely. Nurses, tradespeople, retail employees, restaurant workers, construction crews, warehouse employees and many others still have to travel to the place where the work happens.

Even among office workers, many employers will continue to want employees together for at least part of the week.

There is also a scale problem. A few hundred people shortening their commute would be meaningful to those workers and potentially useful to nearby businesses, but Richmond Hill’s overall road network carries vastly more trips.

And as Guirguis points out, the biggest obstacle may not be technology at all.

“We do think employers would be interested, but there is still some education needed. The biggest hurdle isn’t whether the spaces or technology exist. It’s getting companies comfortable with the idea that a workplace doesn’t necessarily have to be one centralized office.

“Our experience over the last few years has shown us that there is already a group of people looking for exactly this kind of option.”

Maybe traffic policy should also ask where we work

Richmond Hill will still need better transit, safer walking and cycling connections, good road management and thoughtful land-use planning.

Neighbourhood coworking is not a substitute for any of them.

But congestion is ultimately produced by trips. One way to deal with a long trip is to move that person faster. Another is to make the trip shorter.

And unlike many transportation investments, shortening the commute could produce other benefits at the same time: employees regain time, employers retain access to a professional workplace, local commercial areas gain daytime customers and some of the money commuters currently take out of Richmond Hill stays here.

The question may therefore be worth testing rather than simply debating.

Perhaps the next experiment in Richmond Hill transportation does not need to begin with another road.

It could begin with a desk, closer to home.