ABSTRACT
It is a curious fact of history already noted that even as office buildings came to dominate city centres in the nineteenth century, there was only the crudest understanding of the internal dynamics of the office economy in geography, economics and urban planning. For decades, academic analysis of cities barely recognised offices as a distinct facet of urban structure, and when they did, the work was largely descriptive rather than analytical. The chapter traces the office economy through classical economics, spatial explanations and the emergence of an activity-based approach, and the chapter sees the office economy finally recognised as a distinctive facet of urban growth.
