A report released last fall by the World Economic Forum estimated that machines would handle more than half of all workplace tasks by 2025. However, the report also noted that, at the same time, advances in technology would create a greater number of new jobs.

These rapid advances in technology are having a transformative effect on real estate markets. A repurposing of office space as well as space-sharing is becoming the norm. For example, in New York City, a retail facility opened by Lord & Taylor more than a century ago has been purchased by WeWork, “a seven-year-old startup whose office-sharing model is helping to reinvent the concept of work space,” according to The New York Times. WeWork will house its headquarters in the facility.

Headquarters location decisions are being made for a myriad of reasons, including to access talent and to burnish a company’s corporate image. Urban areas provide access to tech-savvy millennials who seek a city’s lifestyle offerings.

Life sciences companies’ need for a flourishing talent pool of millennials is similarly affecting their real estate decisions, prompting industry leaders to invest in higher-cost cities and to design cutting-edge facilities. Nonetheless, some life science companies are choosing locations “along the edge” of more costly cities where they can still enjoy the synergy of surrounding innovation.