Moving to the outskirts: a major trend in 2021
15 February 2021 
The Covid-19 crisis has profoundly altered our relationship to work and has changed our understanding of what a place of work is. Indeed, the health crisis has reminded us of the importance of offices in our social lives, in relationships between colleagues and for the wellbeing of employees. Remote working has made us think harder about how we can reorganise offices: the way we see offices and the way we occupy them has changed. New trends, offering better responses to employee expectations, have emerged while others, which had long since been abandoned, are resurfacing.
The relocation of company offices in towns and cities towards the outskirts is one of the big trends of 2021. Let’s take a closer look at it!
Increasing numbers of companies, small, medium or large, are currently considering setting up satellite headquarters around the outskirts of towns and cities rather than having their main headquarters in the centre. The geographic diversification of companies is an important way in which company directors are re-thinking how their companies work.
Little by little, companies are leaving big cities to settle in the outskirts. Relocating in this way makes work places easier to access, which improves quality of life for employees. The direction big cities such as Brussels are heading in, with laws like the kilometre tax, a 30 km/h speed limit and no real alternatives for commuters, is only making it more difficult for employees to get to their offices and offers further incentives for companies to relocate.
There’s also a rational argument for relocating to the outskirts:
Building prices are significantly lower than in the centre! For the price of one office in the centre of Brussels, you can now set up two or even three in the outskirts. That is a persuasive argument for many companies.